


Walk This Path of Dust and Ashes

by Tassos



Category: Jericho, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Supernatural Crossover Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-09
Updated: 2009-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-02 11:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tassos/pseuds/Tassos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day after Ruby drags Castiel out of Hell, twenty-three bombs fall on twenty-three American cities, devastating the country in one fell swoop. Resources are suddenly in short supply, small emergencies turn into disasters, and outside of the town of Jericho's borders, it's every man for himself. As the town struggles to set up a defense force against road gangs amid domestic unrest, four refugees walk in from the fallout zone in the West.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Betas: huge thanks to kaylashay81 and fryadvocate  
> Spoilers for Supernatural Season 4 and Jericho early Season 1

When they left the Impala behind, Dean didn't say a word. He didn't cry either, and he kept a brisk pace ahead of the others for as long as he could until Sam's freakishly long legs caught up. He didn't say anything, but their shoulders brushed together for the first time in months and Sam's eyes were wet the one time Dean looked at him. Sam looked back and they both understood that this was what the End of the World felt like, never mind that the actual end had apparently come three weeks ago.

The four of them loaded up with everything they could carry from the trunk: shotguns down their backs, handguns and knives tucked away, a machete each for Dean and Sam, charms around their necks, herbs and salt in little bags stuffed with what food they had in the duffles, a bandolier of ammo that was despairingly light. All together, it was a heavy load and they looked like Mexican bandits; the first truck that slowed beside them two days later ended up leaving them alone.

They were somewhere in the west, Dean wasn't sure where, but it didn't matter anyway. After a week on foot, it all looked the same. The empty highway stretched before and behind them, a black slash cutting through dying fields. The corn stalks rustled in the wind, a slow dry rasping that sounded like eternity. Dean just wished it would stop. Wished he could think of something to say that would break the silence but every conversation fell flat before it even started when they were simply four more people on the road looking to survive.

Up ahead, a cloud of dust trailed Sam and Ruby where they walked on the shoulder. Two dark heads at mismatched heights. Dean watched them, frustration burned out. As much as he hated the demon, he couldn't do anything about her presence. They'd come to a truce of sorts. She stayed away from him, Dean didn't off her with her own knife. She'd taken Sam from him but she'd also saved Castiel even if she couldn't free him from the torture that kept him weak and trapped in his host, and that was something.

Cas was hanging in there. He gripped Dean's arm tight and watched the ground as he walked, one foot carefully in front of the other, each one a battle because of his broken leg. Dean still wasn't sure how much he felt of his host's pain, how much of it was his from the beating he took when he was dragged into Hell. Either way he was in bad shape and was worse than Sam about admitting how much pain he was in. Not that they had anything to give him. The meds had been the first thing they ran out of.

Still, he was walking, and the way Cas explained it, his life was now tied to his host's and his host's all too human frailty.

"Dean." Castiel pulled on his arm a little and Dean stopped.

"Water?" he asked because Cas wouldn't. The canteen was half empty, but there was still almost a liter left in the Coke bottle that would last another two days if they were careful.

Castiel sipped slowly, and Dean tucked the canteen back on his belt when he was done. "Looks like they found something."

Ruby and Sam had stopped up ahead and were staring at something on the ground. A sign, Dean saw when he and Cas reached them. _Jericho 47, Wichita 196, Kansas City 362._ Dean ignored the irony - of course they were in fucking Kansas - and asked Sam instead, "Three days, you think?"

Sam glanced at Castiel who met his gaze and nodded, grip tightening on Dean to say that yes, he could make it if they pushed. "Guess so," said Sam quietly.

Ruby looked down the road, staring at the great big nothing in between them and what might be civilization. "Let's hope they're friendly."

Dean shrugged at Sam. Odds were against it. The corner of Sam's mouth lifted in reply because the odds usually were.


	2. Part 1

_Recognizing that I volunteered as a Ranger, fully knowing the hazards of my chosen profession, I will always endeavor to uphold the prestige, honor, and high esprit de corps of the Rangers.  
\--- Ranger's Creed_

* * *

"Hey! Hey! Hey! Break it up!" Main street looked like something out of the French Revolution. Jake could see Eric's head right in the thick of it, putting himself between about thirty angry people and Gracie's Market where another dozen people were shouting back. Jimmy was with him, but Jake didn't waste any time fighting his way through to his brother's side. Two against a mob wasn't playing the odds.

"Hey, calm down," he said to people as he passed. "What's going on?"

"Price gouging's what's going on!" said the man whose elbow he'd grabbed as he jerked it free. "And we're sick of it!"

"Calm down, people," Eric's voice carried over the crowd. "Let's all take a deep breath here. Destroying the store doesn't help anyone."

"Gracie's been ripping us off!"

Gracie herself stood behind Jimmy's bulk with indignation in every line of her body. "I'm supposed to just give away food for free?" she yelled back, throwing everyone into another uproar.

"You and your deals! What about those of us with nothing left to trade? We're starving here!"

"Hey! No one's starving!" Eric had to shout to be heard. "Gracie's shelves are getting as bare as everyone's cupboards. If that means you can't trade for as much, it's because she's making sure there's enough to go around. Now come on. We are not doing this! If you want to loot the shelves in there then there really will be nothing left. For anyone."

It was enough to break the momentum and the crowd quieted. Jake took that as his cue to gently push people back. "Go home," he told them, touching an arm here, a shoulder there. Grumbling, the crowd backed off, dark looks cast over their shoulders at Gracie who was looking anything but graceful. Jimmy helped herd them away, and Jake clapped him on the shoulder as they passed each other, getting an uneasy smile in return, before he matched Eric's explosive sigh with one of his own.

"That was close."

"Ungrateful people," Gracie said darkly to the crowd's back. "How am I supposed to make a living? You know what it's like getting supplies?"

Both Eric and Jake glanced at Dale, the unassuming teenager standing just outside the doors who they both knew was the real strength behind Gracie's store. Dale avoided eye contact and ducked back inside.

"Maybe you could ease up on your deals." Eric said to Gracie with a nod at the dispersing crowd. "Not all of them have antiques to trade you."

"I trade in more than antiques," said Gracie tartly. "And I give everyone a fair deal." She eyed them both, looking for them to contradict her, but Jake wasn't about to touch that considering she was the largest food distributor they had. Not that he had any authority to do so.

Eric opened his mouth, then ended up saying, "Let us know if you have more problems." Apparently even being Deputy Mayor wasn't enough authority to push it.

Jake fell into step with Eric as they left the grocery and headed the two blocks down Main Street to City Hall. "What sparked that off?"

"I don't know," said Eric. "Jimmy and I got there when they were piling up the firewood."

"We're at witch burning already?"

"Well, we got the bricks before they got thrown." Eric brushed his hand through his hair. "Doesn't matter really. Gracie is only the latest of the complaints we've seen."

Jake took the steps two at a time and held the door open. City Hall was a riot of noise and people waiting in line at the Sheriff's Department where the deputies, four without Eric, were doing their best to handle the crowd. It looked like half the people here had been outside Gracie's, a thought confirmed by Jimmy trying to sort them off to the side to make one group complaint.

"You've still got your work cut out for you," he murmured to his brother as they slid past it all to the Mayor's office on the opposite side of the hallway.

"Don't remind me."

He opened the door and when it closed behind them, it dulled the roar to an unpleasant throb. Mayor Green was standing behind his desk, sorting through a pile of papers that, like everything these days, were probably the day's complaints. It made Jake tired just watching, and he threw himself down on the couch instead.

"Boys." Dad looked first at Jake then Eric, then said, "I hope that's not a new barrel of trouble I hear out there."

"There was almost a riot at Gracie's," said Eric. "People are starting to chafe at her prices."

"People are starting to chafe at the lack of food to go around." Dad lowered himself into his chair with a sigh. "I take it you stopped it."

"This time."

"Jimmy's handling the group that came in to file a complaint."

"And here I thought this day was almost over," said Dad wryly.

"I'll take care of it," said Eric. "It's getting late and it's not like I'll have Mom on my case for missing dinner." He didn't quite twitch as he spoke but the tension was still there in his shoulders. In Dad's too, although he was doing his best to keep it normal, and since Jake was keeping well out of it, he did them both a favor and changed the subject.

"I had a hundred eighty five volunteers show up at the fire house today."

"That many?"

"Mostly older folks. About thirty vets. The rest are pretty green." Jake had wondered how they were going to make it for a second that morning if this is what the town had to offer for the town's armed defenses and border patrol. Farmers, bankers, and real estate agents.

"How do they look?" asked Dad.

Jake gave him a half shrug. He was as new to training men to be ad hoc Rangers as they were to being them. The last three days he'd forgone sleep and read his grandfather's U.S. Army Ranger Handbook cover to cover before searching out Paul and Andy, two vets in their sixties, both big stout men, rounding and graying and a wealth of wisdom from a combined thirty years in military service. Even with their help making plans, the task was daunting. "Most haven't fired a gun before. Most of the ones that have, haven't at anything living. That's the second thing I'm teaching them. After how to keep their eyes peeled."

"I'm sure they'll be fine. It was only the first day."

"Yeah." Jake had recognized a lot of faces from the Tacoma Bridge, less scared now that they weren't facing down mercenaries' semi-automatics, but no less resolute. These were men and women who understood what they were signing up for and though he couldn't forget the wide-eyed fear on the faces of those with a shotgun to their shoulders for the first time, he couldn't forget that no one had gone home early either.

"Give them time," said Dad.

"Time's one of our many supplies that we're in limited supply of," said Jake. In fact, it was probably their most limited. Today it was Gracie's, tomorrow he didn't even want to speculate. Seemed like every day things spiraled further and further out of control.

Eric turned from the window. "Any luck with negotiating with the farmers?"

"Still working on it." Dad sighed and folded his hands on his desk. "Seems that when it comes to asking for _them_ to share, suddenly we're out to make communists of everyone. Folks still don't seem to get that the only way we'll get through this is together."

"They'll come around. They have to." Eric glanced at Jake and Dad didn't miss it.

"We're still doing all right," he said sharply. "We can afford to have them come around on their own."

"I wasn't - "

"I know what you were thinking and the answer is no." He gave Jake a hard look in turn that he remembered best from getting caught sneaking in or out of the house when he was a teenager. At least this time, Eric was caught in it, too. "Not in Jericho. Or we might as well roll over for every road gang that come through since we'll be no better than them." Eric nodded, giving way because he didn't want it to come to that either. Jake was less certain than his father that it wouldn't, but if that day did come, he didn't want to know what kind of rock and hard place they were caught between.

Dad started straightening his desk. "Sounds like it's settled down out there."

The Sheriff's Department was less crowded when they finally emerged from the office. Only a handful of people were still there, including four that were clustered around Jimmy who smiled gratefully when Eric went over to join him. Bill, Ridley, and Hawkins, along with the other staff in the building were packing up for the day. It was getting dark outside and everyone wanted to be home before the sunlight was completely gone. They'd be walking home in the dark as it was.

"Here's the final tally, Mayor." Bill held out the papers that had the summary of the day's work, hand written in neat columns. Jake nodded to Hawkins as he passed who was as inscrutable as ever but nevertheless gave Jake a polite smile in return.

"Thanks." Dad was already flipping through the summary. "Get home safe now."

Outside, Jake said, "Mom's going to kill you if you read that at the table."

"Son, if she killed me for every thing she disapproved of, I'd have been dead before you were born. You, on the other hand," Dad caught Jake's eye, "skipped dinner last night."

Jake chuckled ruefully. He'd been up with Paul and Andy last night making shift schedules for the checkpoints - not that that was going to be a good enough excuse for Mom. "Yeah. Thanks for reminding me." Honestly, though, Jake didn't mind. He was here in Jericho for his mother to fuss over, and after the bombs, that was everything.

* * *

An hour after dawn saw Jake riding shotgun in one of the handful of working trucks they had left. Calling it rust with an engine was uncharitable, but Jake wasn't feeling nice when he could feel every pothole in the road as they drove west along 56 to check out a report of theft. He had one ten-person squad with him, piled in the back, as an exercise in observation and patrol.

It wasn't what he had planned for their training today; he'd rather have spent the time with target practice before their turn to stand guard at the Cherry Valley Checkpoint this afternoon. There was no grace period however, and Jake wasn't going to waste the opportunity.

The call was from yesterday's list. Gray Anderson had apparently arrived bright and early to make a case out of missing oats and horse feed as example number whatever-he-was-up-to of why Mayor Green was letting down the town and he should be elected Mayor instead. It was more posturing, and though Jake was all for checking out the threat, he hated feeling jerked around as part of small town politics.

When they arrived on the farm, Ken Riker and his wife were on the front porch, Ken with his shotgun in hand. He only relaxed when they stopped and he recognized them. "Cyrus, what's this?"

Cyrus, who'd driven and whose father's farm was a few miles further down the road, gestured vaguely at the rest of the squad that was clambering out of the truck bed. The two who could shoot were armed. "We're here to check out the complaint you filed at City Hall."

Jake and Cyrus stepped forward and met Ken at the base of the steps. "Jake Green."

Ken shook his hand. "I remember you." He gave Jake a once over that suggested he knew very well who Jake was and what he'd gotten up to as a teenager. "I hear you're asking for volunteers for a Border Patrol."

"Yes, sir." Jake nodded at the squad that was hovering around the truck behind them. "We formed up yesterday, and when the Mayor asked me to look into your report, I figured this was as good time as any to get them familiar with the area."

Ken frowned, skeptical, but all he said was, "I'm sure glad you folks came out here so quick."

And now Jake felt like a hypocrite for wishing Gray had decided to sleep in. But he nodded and asked if it was okay to bring the squad over to hear what Ken had to say.

"The horse feed was stolen two days ago," Ken told them. "Someone had gotten into the barn with a crowbar or something and made off with what I had left."

"How much was that?" asked Jake.

"About twenty sacks, about forty pounds each. I was saving it for the horses this winter."

"The horses were fine?"

"Yeah, the stable wasn't touched. First thing I checked. Whatever they used on the barn wasn't good enough to get in I suppose."

"When did you notice it was gone?" asked Dan Stiles. He was one of Jake's accountants but seemed to have taken to heart his instructions to pretend they were the cops in _Law &amp; Order._

"When I went in to get the tractor out after breakfast," Ken shrugged. "I'd already seen to the horses but since I'm free ranging them till I can't no more, I didn't check the barn till after."

Jake looked over at the barn that stood closer to the cornfields than the stable across the yard. Cyrus's rust bucket was parked about half way between them facing the house which made the third point of the triangle of buildings. "You didn't hear anything," he said and Ken shook his head, confirming. "Any idea who it was? Anyone unusual you've seen around?"

"Nope. Only one in and out has been the Hanson's youngest, but he's a good kid. Used to play with Will."

Jake broke his squad into teams of two and sent them to look around. "Remember, the most important thing is to separate facts from guesses," he told them. There wasn't much to see, and Ken wasn't very optimistic as he watched them putter around. He shifted a bit and looked at Jake, but whether he was waiting for him to move off or stay, Jake wasn't sure. Something told him, it was the latter, so he stayed close for another minute, watching his people play detective.

"Was there anything else you wanted to add?" Cyrus was peering at tire tracks in the dust that may or may not have been from their own truck.

"I don't know if it's important." Ken passed his shotgun from his right hand to his left.

"What is it?"

"Lydia thinks Becca Hanson's hiding something. But it wasn't them. I don't believe it. I've known Keith going on thirty years and he would never." He looked out over the yard into the corn field. Harvest was done and all that remained were empty, drooping stalks waiting to be cut down.

The line between what people would never do in good times and what they would in bad was a fuzzy one. Jake didn't insult him by saying anything. Ken knew it as well as he did. His wife had gone back inside, but he could still see her and his children peering out the windows.

"We'll keep an eye out," said Jake. The pairs were starting to drift back into the yard. "I'm hoping to have regular patrols started next week. Maybe they'll run across something."

When they made it back to the firehouse, Paul came out to meet Jake at the truck. "We couldn't reach you on the radio."

"Didn't have a chance to swap the batteries before we left. What happened?" Jake slammed his door closed.

"Refugees from Colorado. First ones since we put up the checkpoints and the men there didn't know what to do." Paul turned as Jake came up beside him and they crossed the short distance to the briefing room that was doubling as their classroom. "They were armed to the teeth but in bad shape. One of the men was walking on a broken leg. They were willing to hand over their weapons if we helped them so I sent them to the Med Center and told City Hall. There's some hullabaloo off in one of the warehouse on the east side and only person they could send to check them out was Gray Anderson. Your father wants you over there."

Jake went inside long enough to get a fresh radio then turned around and headed for the road. "Debrief them for me, will you?" He waved at the squad who was looking nervous again. Paul nodded and started ushering them back to the briefing room while Jake took off at a jog for the Med Center.

* * *

It wasn't hard to spot the newcomers. Scruffy and worn down, they looked dead on their feet in the pale light coming in through the windows. Two nurses and April were crowded around two of the men, one on the gurney and the other stuck there by the injured one's grip on his arm.

"Lady, just let me in with him," the one standing by the gurney was saying to April. "He's not even conscious anymore and I promise I won't touch his virtue."

"It would be a lot easier for me to work on him alone -"

The man sighed and grumbled, but the look on April's face was a familiar one of both sympathy and determination. "Fine," the man said finally. He let out another sigh then leaned over his friend. "Cas!" he said loudly, tapping his cheek. "I need you to let go of me."

The third man and the woman were standing closer to the door, propping up the wall and holding water bottles although neither one of them were drinking as they watched, empty with exhaustion. The woman's attention fixed on Gray and Jake as soon as they walked in, but the man only gave them a passing glance while April pried apart the other two.

"Hey! Careful, careful! Don't touch the burn!" the man raised a hand to block April.

"Sir, I need to -"

"I know, just don't touch the burn. It makes him scream, infected or something."

"Okay." April carefully avoided the man's left arm as she leaned over him.

"April?" Jake broke into the scene. "Everything all right?"

She looked up with a smile for a second before bending back over the blood pressure cuff. "We're doing just fine." She smiled at the man hovering. "He's going to be just fine."

"Yeah." He didn't sound like he believed it, but he took a deep breath and stepped back anyway.

"Hi." Gray stepped up to the woman who hadn't taken her eyes of them. "Gray Anderson. This is Jake Green." He held out his hand to them. The woman stared back with a challenge in her eyes, and it was the man who stepped forward, jostling her, to shake hands.

"Sam," he said. "This is Ruby. That's Dean and Castiel on the gurney. We really appreciate your help taking us in like this." His voice was quiet and sincere to match his firm grip.

"We heard you came in on foot," said Jake. "How long have you been walking?"

Only one of Sam's shoulders twitched in what must have been a shrug. "A little over a week maybe? We saw the sign for Jericho about three days ago. Cas hasn't been doing too well."

"You look like you all could use a hot meal and some rest." This close, Jake could see how their clothes hung off them. For such a big guy, Sam looked like he'd fall over in a stiff wind, and Ruby was skin and bones. They looked like they'd taken their own beatings over the past few weeks

"Yeah," Sam agreed with a rueful smile that was three parts forced. "We could at that." He looked at the bottle of water in his hand as if he hadn't realized it was there and opened it.

"Paul said you came from Colorado?" asked Gray while Sam drank.

"What's left of it," said Ruby, slumping back against the wall again.

Sam wiped his chin with the back of his hand leaving a dirty streak. "We came south from Wyoming. Denver was gone. 25 just stops at Johnstown."

"When were you there?"

"A while ago. Before we left the car." Sam shrugged again. "It's all kind of a blur."

"Two weeks," said Ruby. Her hostile glare hadn't softened and Jake was beginning to think that that was her default setting, that or the adrenaline that was keeping her on her feet was making her jumpy. Way things were out there, it wouldn't surprise him.

"Were there any other survivors?" asked Jake.

"In that? Not really. Most people who survived the blast died from radiation poisoning"

"What about rescue crews?"

"More than just rescue crews on the roads these days," said Ruby darkly. "Getting too close is a bad idea."

Sam tapped his water bottle on his thigh. "Not always."

"That's because you two are idiots and that - Cas has you by the balls."

"Just Dean," said Sam, eyes hitting Jake's with a flash of annoyance and something dark and frustrated to match the contempt in his voice. Dean was still hovering by April and her newest patient, worried and tense. He wasn't quite holding his friend's hand, instead his fingers curled around the metal rail, and Jake wondered if there wasn't something else going on there.

"What were you doing there?" Gray hadn't missed Sam's disdain either.

"Just passing through." Ruby finished her water and crushed the bottle in her hand, making a plastic crackle too loud for their conversation. On Gray's face, the questions were piling up thick and fast, but Sam shut down, tapping his bottle again then taking a long sip, partly turned away, still watching as April and the nurse finished the preliminaries and started moving Castiel to a room. Dean trailed behind like a puppy. Gray had to ask twice where they were heading before Sam tuned back in, his shrug as eloquent as Ruby's.

"Thanks for taking the time to talk to us. We'll find you a place to stay and maybe some food while you get looked at." Jake nudged Gray pointedly until he shook hands in kind. Or maybe the hesitation was its own message, one Gray had no intention of backing down from. It took Jake stepping into him to get him to follow Jake out.

"Just passing through. They walked _into_ the fallout zone." Gray shook his head as soon as they were out the door. "I don't like it."

"As long as they don't cause any trouble, you don't have to." Jake wasn't sure he liked it either, but they'd come to Jericho and they needed help.

"And how long do you think that'll last?" Gray stopped at the corner far enough away not to be overheard. Ruby and Sam had slid to the floor and weren't paying attention anyway. "Did you see what they were carrying? People who carry that kind of weaponry are not out for a Sunday stroll."

"You've seen the roads, Gray. They're not supposed to defend themselves?" Jake kept moving, not wanting to have this conversation here.

Gray gave him an all too knowing look. "I've seen exactly what the roads do to people, and what those people then do to anyone else who crosses their path. We shouldn't be letting people like that into town. They are dangerous and they will become a problem."

"Don't make it a bigger one, then," said Jake.

Gray's head snapped around. "Don't you dare accuse me -"

"I'm not." Jake stopped and faced him. "But you're not doing anyone any favors treating them as guilty until proven innocent. It's not your decision anyway, what to do with them."

"No. We all know who gets to do that."

It was ridiculous and Jake had too many other things to do today to spend it in a pissing contest that wasn't even his. "Yeah, we do." How he kept getting into these things Jake still didn't quite understand. "Tell my dad I'll see him later."

He turned his back on Gray and headed back to the firehouse.

* * *

Later turned out to be that afternoon when a PTA meeting at the high school was crashed by protesting teenagers. They'd gotten their hands on firecrackers and had decided to shoot them off outside and set off a panic, completely derailing the meeting. Eric called Jake to bring the fire department's ambulance and a couple trucks to ferry the injured to the Med Center.

The next hour Jake spent navigating chaos and trying to keep his brand new Rangers organized, calm, and coordinated between the Med Center and the school. It wasn't easy. Only a few of them were prepared to deal with a crisis and April kept stealing his drivers to help carve out space in the already crowded Med Center to put the injured. It was a lot of cuts and bruises and people looking for lost family members, but also several broken bones, six people trampled including a couple kids and their mom, and one heart attack.

Kinchy, the other doctor, was taking care of him, but from the frenetic energy and shouting coming surrounding the gurney and later the exam room, Jake didn't think it was going too well. They no working circuits even if though they had gas for the generator to power the equipment. It was a mess from top to bottom.

He'd barely stepped back into the noise of the hall when across it he heard, "Hey! Stoppit!"

It was Emily's voice but Jake couldn't see her through the swarming mass of people crowding the corridors, waiting to be seen. Several kids were crying, young ones whose parents had taken them with them to the high school for the meeting rather than leave them at home. There weren't many teenagers. The deputies had corralled all the ones they'd caught at the school though so far they hadn't found who'd shot off the bottle rockets and screeching cakes.

He passed as quickly as he could toward the doors where more shouts and cries were coming from, arriving just in time to watch Emily get between two boys ready to kill each other. Fists flew and Jake leapt too late to keep her from being hit in the face, getting his arms around the closer teenager. Fifteen or sixteen, he had height but no bulk to throw Jake off though he made a hell of an effort.

"Get off me!" "Bastard!" A ring formed around them, more teenagers either not quite brave enough to start chanting or stunned by the violence. Jake was surprised no one had tried to jump him, but when he swung around, trying to keep the boy in his arms under control, he saw why. Sam, their mysterious visitor, had the other boy restrained with his arms twisted behind his back.

"Hey! Chill!" It didn't take Sam long at all to subdue the kid and the look on his face just dared anyone else to try something. It was rather remarkable how fast it was over. Jake imagined that being six foot four and built, no matter how starved, had something to do with it.

Emily quickly took charge of the crowd, snapping orders as only a teacher knew how, making the gawkers move on and find their parents or leave.

"Thanks." Jake shifted his grip on the boy he held.

Sam nodded, eyes flickering to the doorway where Dean watched, filling the space. Guarding it, Jake realized, from the chaos of the halls. Sam looked away quickly, jaw clenching even as he asked, "Where do you want him?"

They were just punk kids, both of whom were standing sullen and glaring at each other but no longer spitting nails. "Where are your parents?" Jake asked them.

A shake from Sam got an answer from the boy he held: a nod in the direction of the hallway behind Jake. The teenager Jake held indicated the other direction so he let them go with a warning to stay away from each other.

"I'll keep an eye on them," said Emily as they walked away. She wiped at her lip, smearing blood where her teeth had cut her.

"You all right?" She dodged the hand Jake reached out to her and gave him a look he recognized well that was two thirds lie, one third grit. And all of it warning that he didn't have the right to touch or care.

"Fine." The fingers she pressed to her lip came away bloody.

Jake knew better than to push and dropped his hand. Emily accepted the cloth that Sam held out to her.

"Thanks," she said.

"No problem," said Sam. He looked between them and Jake resisted the urge to roll his eyes because there wasn't anything to look at. "You mind my asking what happened?"

"That? Stupid insults." Emily's words were muffled by the cloth she pressed against her face. "Neighborhood pride, if you can believe that."

"And all these people?" Dean spoke up from the doorway he still blocked, now by leaning against the door jam. His eye roved over the people nearby. Sam too, and now that Jake saw it, he noticed the way that each of them kept their hands loose and ready.

"Someone set off fireworks outside the PTA meeting," said Jake after a beat.

Dean perked up. "Really?" A smile crossed his face, making him look suddenly ten years younger and earning him glares from both Sam and Emily. "That sucks," he added hastily.

"Yes. Stampedes have that tendency," said Emily. With barely a glance Jake's way, she walked off, with no doubt a thousand things to do. Jake had his people to get back to.

"Dude. Firecrackers," he heard Dean say as he left. If Sam answered, Jake didn't hear it.

He passed their room a few more times as he shuttled people in and out and helped the nurses keep order with the magic touch of simply standing there. The door was closed, and through the window and blinds that made up the top half of the wall, he saw Dean's shadow sometimes pacing, sometimes sitting in a chair by the bed. He knew it was Dean because Sam was in the halls, helping out where the nurses told him to. Jake even watched him put stitches in a man's arm, talking to distract him and freeing up the nurse to see to others.

Sam caught him staring once, but didn't say anything. Somehow it didn't surprise Jake as much as his friend hiding in Castiel's room did. But then he caught Sam staring at the closed door once, face cold and maybe it didn't surprise him after all.

Dad stopped by to see how things were going, get an update, and talk to some of the kids who may have seen something. Mom came in and the first thing she told Jake was to get out of her way and he wasn't hurt was he?

"Mom, I'm fine." He couldn't help the exasperation that crept in to his voice. Mom studied him with steely eyes for a second before deciding for herself that he was. "All right. How's April doing? She shouldn't be overdoing it in her condition."

Jake gestured around them. "In this?"

"Look, just find her, and make sure she sits down for a minute. Eric hasn't been by, has he? No, "she said before he could answer. "Never mind."

"Mom, he's working on getting to the bottom of this."

"He should be working on saving his marriage."

"Mom - "

"I know, I know. Not my business."

"Just cut him some slack," Jake said. "At least until this crisis is over."

"The whole world is one crisis after another, Jake. Just when should I expect him to stand up and take responsibility for his family?"

Jake's radio saved him from having to touch that one with a ten foot pole. Mom waved him off to take it and disappeared to where she was needed. It was Paul calling him, wondering when Jake would be back at the firehouse. They had a shift change coming up and no trucks.

* * *

"I need them to look for the people who set off those firecrackers!"

Jake stormed after Eric into the Sheriff's office. It was Thursday morning somehow. Jake had barely slept after a call from the evening watch reporting several trucks seen on the roads near the outlying western farms. Nothing had come of it, but afterward, Jake, Paul, and Andy had spent the rest of the night working out patrol routes and advancing the schedule for starting them. And now the Sheriff's department was poaching men Jake couldn't spare. "They're not police! They volunteered for the Border Patrol!"

"And I need them in town." Eric spun around, papers in one hand encompassing the three deputies who were in the main room pretending they couldn't hear. "In case you haven't noticed things are falling apart and there's only five of us."

That was low; of course Jake fucking knew, but he couldn't ignore the border any longer. He couldn't effectively defend their territory with only half his Rangers. They weren't even trained yet. He'd had them two days, one if you discounted yesterday's clusterfuck, and already four people had not shown up that morning and another five did him the courtesy of telling him to his face that they were quitting.

"I have road gangs stealing from the western farms. I have three check points on the major roads that need to be watched. I can't spare anyone. Unless you want a repeat of Ravenwood showing up on the Tacoma Bridge."

The room outside stilled, all pretense of not listening gone. They'd all been there for that. They had all helped rig the bridge to blow except for Eric who'd gone for reinforcements.

"No," said Eric, dangerously soft. "I don't. But I also don't want the people of this town fearing for their safety within our limits."

Jake let out an explosive breath, all the fight leaving him because he had no good answer for that. Eric deflated, too, and he took a step back, rubbing both hands over his face, knowing as well as Jake that there wasn't an easy solution.

They were interrupted before either one of them had to voice the hard options before them by Bill knocking on the doorframe to get their attention, a little white around the eyes. "Paul just radioed. They found Brandon Hanson's body out by Chesterfield Road. Looks like he was murdered."

Murdered. They both froze. The papers in Eric's hand crinkled in his grip. There hadn't been a murder in Jericho in thirty years.

Then, the Mayor's office door slammed open and Dad and Gray's raised voices shocked them all into action.

"That's on the west end," said Jake.

"They're taking his body to the Med Center," said Bill. He took a step back to let Jake and Eric through and lead the way to the door. Dad and Gray were up ahead, Gray already making whatever case he was making this time while Dad tried to cut him off.

"Hanson." Jake knew the name but not the man.

"Keith Hanson's youngest," Eric filled in. "He was a couple years behind me in school. Been helping his dad with the farm since he graduated."

But that wasn't where Jake had heard the name before. Ken Riker had mentioned something about the Hanson boy. How his wife thought Mrs. Hanson was hiding something.

"Jimmy went to find his folks," Bill said.

Outside halfway down the street, Dad and Gray were in each other's faces. Two trucks, including Gray's, were parallel parked and the people about had stopped to stare. Hardly surprising given the situation but Jake still tensed up at the scene. Keeping order was hard enough without the two men with the most authority in town arguing in the street.

"- official business and you are not Mayor. I will not have you get in the way and throw baseless accusations around," said Dad.

"And if they did it?"

"Then Bill, Eric, and I will handle it."

Gray backed down a fraction, but his jaw was set and he didn't retreat. He didn't break Dad's stare for another long moment that stretched until Jake and Eric reached them. He let them pass, and Dad muttered about interfering busybodies as they made the walk to the Med Center.

They arrived as Paul's truck pulled up with Brandon Hanson's body. Only a jacket covered him up, inadequate for the job and leaving the impression of a man passed out rather than dead. Jake swallowed hard as Paul and Bill wrestled the body down. Death in the flesh was something that he didn't think he'd ever get used to.

Eric had already gone in ahead and they were met at the door by a couple of nurses and a gurney. April joined them as soon as the rest of them crossed the threshold.

"His dad asked us to keep an eye out for him because he hadn't been home in a few days. We found him on the dirt road that passes a couple miles down from the Hanson Farm," said Paul. "No blood but he was twisted up something awful."

"We'll need an autopsy," Dad said to April who nodded in two jerks, already focused on the body.

"Yes, of course." She swallowed hard. "I'll get started on it as soon as I can. I'll need . . . I'll need a description of how he was found."

Paul nodded. "I can write it down for you."

"Bill, why don't you help get his statement," said Dad. "Figure out what we're dealing with here."

There was a bit of a shuffle as Bill tried to cross to Paul without stepping on any toes in the narrow space by the desk. The doors opened again and Gray came in, ignoring Dad's sigh.

He raised a preemptive hand. "Johnston, I'm just here to see that this gets done right."

When Dad, after a hard stare, continued on without a protest it was as good as permission and Gray followed them after April down the hallway toward the elevator. Jake made space for him and stopped when he stopped after they turned the corner. It didn't take a genius to figure out who he was staring at.

Closing the door behind him, Sam stared back, a small furrow growing between his brows as he took in the covered body down the hall and the procession headed his way, but he kept his distance.

"Jake," Dad said abruptly, "why don't you introduce me. Gray, I meant what I said about poking your nose in."

Gray didn't stop his thousand yard stare, but Dad walking towards him stopped Sam's. Jake followed.

"Hey, Sam."

"Hey." Sam nodded to him. "Jake, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. This is my father, Johnston Green, the Mayor. Dad, Sam." Jake gestured between them

"Pleasure to meet you, son."

Sam shook Dad's hand and then glanced over their shoulders. "What's going on?"

"Well, I was hoping you could help us with something," said Dad. "I heard you folks came from Colorado, Route 56."

"Yeah?" Sam's eyes flickered back to the gurney as April and one of the nurses waited for the elevator. "Someone killed out that way?"

Dad didn't take his eyes off of Sam. "I'm afraid so."

Then Sam moved, twisted between them, shaking off the hand Dad lay on his arm without any trouble. Long legs ate up the space between him and the gurney, making April startle, and he pulling down the sheet to see Brandon's face, cold, dead, and hauntingly peaceful.

"Admiring your handiwork?" Gray's voice cut through the sudden silence. The coldness that passed over Sam's face froze Gray in his half step forward and had Jake's hand halfway to his gun before he realized it.

"Gray!" Dad was two steps behind Sam and already reaching to keep them apart. Jake shifted on his feet, the hair on the back of his neck prickling because they didn't know what Sam was capable of. The road stripped people down to desperation, but even so, this wasn't the man Jake had seen yesterday helping put people back together after the stampede.

"You recognize him, don't you?" Gray ignored everyone else, ramping up to a head of steam. "Don't you!"

"Yes," said Sam, straightening to his full height, hands loose like they'd been yesterday with the teenagers. He scanned the room, catching Jake both on his face and gun hand before moving on to Eric on the other side of Gray. "He was alive when I ran into him."

"Just you?" Dad asked sharply.

"Me and Ruby." Sam was watchful, waiting for someone to make the first move. "And he was alive when we left."

Gray snorted. "Right."

"Where was this?" Dad asked, putting a hand out to shut Gray up. Sam's attention flickered back toward Jake just as the door snicked behind him, making him spin at the sudden noise, gun gripped but no quite drawn on Dean who jerked his hands up in surprise. Jake eased off but didn't relax.

"What's going on out here?" Dean assessed the hallway and its occupants like he had yesterday, like a soldier, before his eyes settled on his friend just as dangerously. "Sam?"

"Nothing's going on out here, son," said Dad calmly through the tension, stepping fully between Gray and Sam and waving at Jake to ease up. "Gray here was just leaving."

"No," Gray shook his head and shook off Dad's hand. "Not before _he_," he stabbed an accusing finger at Sam, "explains how he met Brandon."

"Hey! Why don't we all just calm down here!" snapped Dean as Dad gave Eric a look that clearly meant _get Gray out of here before someone gets shot._ Sam had stepped away from Brandon's body and between him and Dean a silent conversation was bouncing back and forth with an ease that belied the tension that was still present between them. Jake couldn't wait to see if they decided to close ranks.

"Gray, come on." Eric tugged on his elbow and Jake did his own rank closing to help.

"Do you want someone else to get killed?" he hissed as they finally got him to back off enough to be out of spitting range. They couldn't get him out of the building, but they did get him halfway to the door, and more importantly out of sight.

"Those men are dangerous." Gray said none too quietly, glaring at Jake now.

"And they turned over their weapons to us because their friend was injured." Gray let them know what he thought of that. Behind them, Jake could hear Dad speaking but not his words, and Sam's deep rumble insisting again that Brandon was alive when they left him.

"Don't let that fool you." Gray stabbed a finger back at the corner they'd turned. "You think that man couldn't do some serious damage without a weapon?"

Jake had seen him do some pretty serious not-damage on the teenager yesterday, just the right amount of force that came with true skill. So yeah, Jake was pretty sure that both he and his friend could do serious damage if they wanted to. He wasn't about to say that, however, not with Eric too quiet for comfort. "I don't think he will."

"And when the next body shows up?"

"They'll probably have an alibi. Babysitting their injured friend, remember? They're not exactly inconspicuous."

Gray wasn't convinced, but neither was he charging back down the corridor. Jake, with an agreeing head tilt from Eric, counted it as a win.

"Trusting them is going to backfire," said Gray, before leaving, frustrated and angry. Not for the first time, Jake wished Gray wasn't so trigger-happy. These times only made it worse, but Jake would have thought he'd learned something by now about jumping the gun.

"You know what's really annoying?" asked Eric as they watched him go. "That he's probably right."

No denying that, Jake sighed his agreement. "Probably." Sam and his friends were hiding something, and maybe Sam did kill Brandon. That look in his eye had nothing good in it, and reconciling that with yesterday's altruism was already posing a lot of questions. Nevertheless, without proof, Jake wasn't willing to string him up. Sometimes things weren't what they seemed, even in the best of times. Good intentions leading to mistake after mistake and a trail of bodies.

Dad was still speaking with Sam and Dean who had both drawn up to stand together. They listened and answered questions calmly and patiently, looking as harmless now as they had dangerous before. Jake hoped for all their sakes that what he saw in their body language was the truth, but he had a sinking feeling that things were about to get a lot worse.

* * *

When he saw the crowd that had formed around the shouting in front of Gracie's Market on his way back to City Hall, Jake's first thought was "not again." This should have been sorted out a few days ago, and he didn't need to deal with any more crap today.

From the sound of it, the fight had already started. Jake had to shove his way through to get to the center.

"You think you can just walk in and eat our food!"

"Get out of town! We don't want you stealing bastards here!"

"Show her the door, Riley!"

Cornered against the wall, was Ruby, her hands outstretched as if that would hold of the mob that was forming around her. A man was at her feet curled around his jewels while two others Jake recognized as regulars from Mary's bar started to close in on her. Her eyes flickered back and forth between them, fearless as she held her ground.

"Hey!" Jake shouted as he burst free of the crowd. "What's going on here!" It was enough to break the spell. Jake figured it helped that Jimmy was pushing his way through the crowd right behind him.

"All right, folks, break it up. Come on, go home,"

"She was stealing food," said one of the two who had Ruby cornered, Kyle, Jake thought his name was.

"So you thought you'd take care of it by beating her up?" Jake walked slowly closer. His gun was still tucked away but within easy reach.

"She started it," said the other that Jake didn't know. Must be Riley. "Look what she did to Miles."

"And what did you do to her?"

"Nothing!" They were outraged, still clouded by anger. Jake eyed both of them, not buying it. Thief or not, cornering a woman three on one was not acceptable, no matter how good of a fighter she was. Kyle glared back, a mulish expression that wasn't going to back down while Riley helped Miles to his feet.

"Bitch!" he spat at Ruby who caught the gob on her cheek.

"Hey!" Jake snapped, stepping between them and Ruby as Jimmy yanked the man's hands behind him.

"Settle down!"

"Is that true?" he turned to Ruby. "We're you stealing food?"

She glowered at him, the same barely checked aggression that he'd seen in her eyes at the Med Center was in her eyes now. "I'm not on the ration list and I didn't have anything to trade," she said. "The back door was open."

"She broke the lock," Kyle snapped. "I saw it."

"And what were you doing back there?" Ruby shot back. "Following me into a dark alley? Going to help me?"

"Hey!" Jake shouted again before another fight broke out. He stepped between them, hands out to keep each on either side of him as the glared over his shoulder. This was already a mess without him losing control. It took a little doing, but he and Jimmy kept them separated and herded them off to City Hall through the crowd that was still gathered along the way.

Word spread like wild fire in Jericho these days, so it was no surprise when Dad and Eric showed up a little later having already heard the story along with Gray and several others.

Jake gave the waiting men a cautious look, knowing the firestorm the fight was about to set off in the Sheriff's office.

"What did I tell you," said Gray.

"We didn't give her a lot of options," said Dad. "I thought one of you was going to get them food." He glanced between Jake and Eric. Jake thought Eric was handling it . . . but then the PTA thing happened. Christ. Now they had another almost riot.

"You're going to give them food after this?" said Gray. "She just tried to rob us."

"I'm not going to let them starve," said Dad managing to convey just what he thought of that option. "Jesus, Gray, they came here with nothing. Did you look at them? I don't care how many guns they have, those people are skin and bones. Have a little compassion. Eric, go get this taken care of."

Eric nodded, a brief sigh of relief at being let out of dealing with the fallout.

"I just think that we need to be careful with them," Gray tried for placating. "Accepting every last person on their word that they don't mean any harm to us is going to backfire. We've already got new threats on the roads and enough trouble with looting and stealing in town. If we can keep troublemakers out then I think we should, is all I'm saying."

"Well, it's a good thing you're not the one making the decisions here, otherwise half the town would be thrown to the wolves," said Dad, turning and heading for the cells. He waved Gray off when he tried to follow and for once Gray let it go.

The four were in separate cells: Ruby on her own on the left was giving the men, together in the other cell, the evil eye as they tried to ignore her with varying degrees of success. Miles and Riley were uncomfortable and trying to hide it while Kyle was busy convincing Jimmy to let them go.

"All right, enough of this," said Dad, hearing enough to let the disgust filter through his voice. "As far as I'm concerned you were all doing something wrong earlier."

"Mayor - "

"Don't interrupt, son," Dad warned Kyle. "I'm not in the mood. Now, you three, I don't know what you were doing around the back door of Gracie's to catch her stealing, but I'm not going to tolerate fighting in the streets, three against one, just because you think she's done something wrong. That's for the deputies to sort out." Kyle's chin jutted out stubbornly, but Dad went on before he could protest further

"Ma'am," he turned to Ruby. "I know you folks have had a hard spell, and it looks like we've had a miscommunication somewhere, but I won't tolerate theft from our food supply either." Ruby didn't look chastised at all. "I'll give you the night to think about it. We'll let you out in the morning."

"Mayor, no! You can't do that!" Kyle immediately protested.

"I can and am," said Dad leaving, Jimmy following.

Jake stayed a moment. "I'll let your friends know where you are," he said to Ruby.

She didn't answer, just gave him another contemptuous look.

It turned out that he was saved the trip to the Med Center. Sam was just coming in the front doors when Jake made it back to the Sheriff's department.

"Jake," he said as soon he saw him. "Someone said Ruby was arrested?" He stuttered to a stop, a little out of breath, his worry clear.

"Yeah," said Jake. "She's fine."

"Was anyone hurt?"

"No." Jake watched as some of the worry eased off of Sam's face. The question was a little odd; it sounded like he wasn't worried about just Ruby. "She was stealing food and ended up in a fight when some men stopped her. They're all staying overnight."

"I want to see her." Sam was already looking past him toward the cells.

Jake led him back and leaned against the wall to wait. Kyle, Miles, and the other guy all gave Sam a once over but wisely didn't say anything.

"You all right?" he asked Ruby who didn't get up from her corner seat.

"Only if you're breaking me out." She cut a glance at Jake and shrugged. "Guess not."

Sam rested his hands around the bars and glanced at the men in the next cell. "They all right?"

"Yes," Ruby rolled her eyes. "Don't worry. I'm being good. Didn't rip them limb from limb or anything. Even if they deserve it."

"Damn it, Ruby what the hell were you thinking?" Sam snapped.

"I was thinking that food might be a good idea," she snapped back. "Relax, Sam. One night in the clink's not going to kill me."

Sam didn't reply, but something made Ruby sit up, her voice sharp when she asked, "What is it?"

Sam clearly didn't want to have this conversation here with four strangers listening in but he went ahead anyway. "That guy I helped a couple days ago. He's dead." Jake straightened at his tone. The way he said it and the way Ruby stared back at him, Jake knew that something more was going on here than a simple warning about possible problems with local law enforcement. This was different, personal.

"He didn't see me." Ruby sat back, the epitome of fake casual. "I'll be fine."

Sam glanced at the men in the other cell who were watching the whole exchange as avidly as Jake was. In the end he only nodded and let go of the bars.

"What's going on?" asked Jake as soon as Sam rejoined him in the hallway.

Sam shook his head. "Hopefully nothing."

Not good enough. Jake grabbed his arm and swung him around into the wall. Sam's hands came up instantly, but Jake let him go and instead got in his face to get his attention. Skin and bones he may be, but what mass Sam had was pure muscle, and Jake didn't want a fight. Answers he did need, nevertheless, and he wasn't about to back down on that front. He had a town to protect.

"Hey. I don't expect you to share your deep dark secrets but if there's a threat coming to this town, I need to know about it."

Sam's jaw clenched but he broke the stare first. "I don't know," he said, shoving Jake back lightly. "I really don't. Probably nothing."

"It sure sounds like something," Jake grudgingly moved away, pissed off now. "And to get close to your girlfriend, whoever's after you will go through _us_. If there's a chance of that then I need to know. You understand?"

"She's not my girlfriend," said Sam, but he got the message. "The guy who killed that kid might know us," he said after a pause. "That's all. I don't know where he is though."

"You think he'll come tonight?"

Sam shrugged. "I doubt it. But Ruby needed to know."

There was more Sam wasn't telling him, that was clear enough. Like how he knew the murderer, who he was, and why he was waiting. It was also clear that Sam wasn't about to share more.

"Look, I'm sorry." Sam looked past him, then his gaze slid back, the defensiveness faded away. "But I couldn't not help him."

Brandon, he meant. He'd gone out on a limb to help a stranger, and Jake knew how hard that was in these times. Looking at him right then, Jake saw a tired man, beaten down but not yet broken. He hadn't been hardened against the fear and loss, not completely.

"Jake," his radio crackled. He didn't answer it right away.

"I'll keep an eye on Ruby tonight," he told Sam quietly, a promise. Sam's eyes were dark and unreadable, but he nodded after a moment and went on his way as Jake's radio crackled again.

He unhooked it from his belt. "Jake here."

"Men on 56," said Luke Ramsey, his voice cracking up but the signal steady enough. "They're asking about two guys that might have passed through, name of Winchester."

_Two?_ thought Jake, glancing back at the cells over his shoulder where Ruby was still behind bars. "What do they want?"

"Justice, they say. They claim the Winchesters killed a couple of their people."

Twisting around, Jake saw the door close behind Sam, the conversation suddenly mixed with the stone cold glare he'd given Gray. He pressed the button on his radio. "Wait for me. I'm on my way."


	3. Part II

_Acknowledging the fact that a Ranger is a more elite Soldier who arrives at the cutting edge of battle by land, sea, or air, I accept the fact that as a Ranger my country expects me to move further, faster, and fight harder than any other soldier.  
\--- Ranger's Creed_

* * *

"Something you want to tell me?" Dean turned on Sam as soon as he got back from chasing after Ruby. The last thirty minutes, Dean had been wanting nothing more than to knock some sense into his brother. Sam was a walking cornucopia of stupid right now.

Sam paced to the window, seeming to ignore Dean and wasn't that just great. If it wasn't for the tense line of his brother's shoulders and the angel in the bed, Dean would have exploded all over his secretive ass. "I thought we agreed that you were done with this."

"You agreed," Sam bit back. "In fact this would be over if you hadn't -"

"We are walking targets!" Dean cut him off. He did not need Sam and his attitude when they had only one _knife_ to defend themselves with. "We might as well have big red arrows above our heads. Keep a low profile. You agreed -"

"I know." He turned away from Dean, staring out the window, one stonewall of uncommunicative bastard. "I know, all right?" he said softer.

Dean had to consciously unclench his fists and stifle the urge to pop Sam one in the jaw. This whole psychic powers bullshit had brought them nothing but trouble, had almost _destroyed_ Sam and the little bitch still thought it was the right decision. Demons spewing everywhere, angels killing each other, and Sam cold with fury, playing right into Lilith's hands. And now here he was, still willing to throw everything away when they could risk it less than ever. Change the status quo and the demons knew.

Thing was, glaring at the stiffness in Sam's shoulders, Dean knew what Sam was going to say to justify it. He knew exactly what had run through his head when Sam had seen that poor kid. However long since their last argument, however long they'd been _safe_ because Sam wasn't using his powers - hadn't made a bit of difference.

Sam didn't say anything else. He knew all the words to this fight, too. They'd been having it in short angry pieces since the seal at the Devil's Gate was broken. As the silence stretched, Dean felt his anger ebb, leaving him hollowed out and simply tired. They'd been having it since Dean returned from Hell. The same goddamned thing every time.

The bombs falling hadn't changed anything except the quality of their silences. Instead of Dean yelling and Sam lying, they got on with what was necessary and stopped pretending that they were just fine with each other. It felt like Stanford all over again, except worse because Sam was right there for all that he felt halfway across the country in his own little bubble. Only this bubble had a slow leak that Dean couldn't stop.

Dean leaned on the chair by Cas's bed, the narrow back biting into his hands. He'd had the stupid thought that when they finally reached a town, they'd catch a break, and couldn't help laughing bitterly and looking up at the ceiling as if God were still there with answers.

The noise was enough to get Sam to quit ignoring him. He settled back against the windowsill, watching Dean warily, and Dean let his head fall forward. "Jesus, Sam."

"It was the right thing to do." Sam shook his greasy bangs out of his face.

"And you couldn't do it the old fashioned way?" The accusation was habit even though it burned just as fresh. Sam ignored it. "You know what this means, right?"

Sam smiled humorlessly. "Yeah. We're not alone here." Which about summed up what was running through Dean's mind. That and they were well and truly fucked.

"You had to leave a calling card."

"Oh, come on Dean." Sam straightened from his slouch against the wall, one hand swinging out at the window. "That kid was possessed before we even got here, and whoever killed him was, too. It was only a matter of time before they figured out we were in town."

"Yeah. Thanks for blowing whatever little time we had to prepare for that, by the way." Dean pushed off the back of the visitor's chair. Cas looked dead where he lay. Bound to his host, Dean wasn't sure if he'd still be able to pick up on demons. Ruby might, but since that plan depended on Ruby, it was a bad one.

"If I hadn't taken that demon out, we wouldn't even know they were here. Better now than before they show up at the door."

Sam wanted that, Dean could see it in his eyes. He wanted them to show up so he could take them apart. It was like Lilith all over again.

Dean swallowed down the first dozen things he wanted to say because cursing right now wasn't going to help. It would just send Sam off again, like Omaha, and Dean couldn't risk it. Only the country getting bombed to hell had kept them together after that.

"Did you find Ruby?" he asked after a minute of glaring. If they had a job here after all, Dean needed to know where all his loose cannons were.

Sam relaxed marginally, the coldness easing from him. "She got thrown in jail for fighting."

"What?"

"Trying to get us food. She got jumped by three guys. They were locked up too."

Ruby in jail was the last thing Dean expected. Not that she shouldn't be there if she was a person, but all things considered, he would have expected a body count. "So no food today?" he asked as the important part of the news sunk in. So far, they'd gotten two meals from the hospital that was clearly reluctant about feeding them, and it hadn't been much. Dean's stomach was still stuck to itself, it was so empty

Sam shrugged. "One of the deputies said they were working on it. Also, that guy, Jake, will probably be gunning for us."

Fuck. "What did you do?"

"Warned Ruby." And made the not so friendly townsfolk suspicious. Great. Sam really knew how to fuck up a job. Dean didn't have to say any of that out loud for Sam to get defensive. "She's vulnerable and we don't know who else may be possessed."

Dean glanced at Castiel lying unconscious on the bed. Eyes bruised and too pale, swaddled up in a cast and blankets that hid the signs of torture. He hadn't woken up yet.

They didn't know how many they were up against either. How they were going to do this, on foot, half starved, and in a town that really didn't want to give them the benefit of the doubt? Yesterday's chaos had only reinforced how on edge Jericho was as they held on to civilization by their fingernails. No FBI badge was going to help them here.

"Any ideas where to start?" he asked Sam.

"What?" Sam didn't look up from the floor, off in his own little world again. Dean wondered sometimes, but he really didn't want to know, so he never asked.

"Ideas, genius," he said. "You know, for this job you landed us in now that there aren't any newspapers and everybody's acting six fries short of a Happy Meal." What he wouldn't kill for a Happy Meal right now.

"Not yet."

"What, demon powers failing you all of a sudden?" Dean spun his chair around and straddled it, arms crossing over the back.

Sam glared at him again, jaw ticking as he did his own tongue biting. Dean didn't really care. He was hungry, and they were screwed and some days he just wanted it all to be over already. He almost wondered if it was even possible to stop demons from opening the last couple seals at this point.

* * *

Out the window, the town of Jericho was bleak. Not run down, not yet, but nevertheless gray and drab to match the cold weather. November was well underway and it was seeping in everywhere.

The Doc looked utterly wiped when she knocked on the doorframe and came in to Castiel's room. Dean was alone with him. Sam had stomped off somewhere and Dean didn't have the energy to even ask where he was going. Sam would probably have ignored him anyway.

"Hi." She smiled, nerves showing under her professional armor. "I came to see how your friend was doing." Her arms were crossed over his chart like she had to hold on tight to keep herself on her feet.

Dean stood as she came over and tried not to loom. The way her eyes darted, he could tell he made her uncomfortable in a way that he hadn't yesterday. "He hasn't woken up yet."

"I gave him something to help him sleep." She checked his pulse, blood pressure, and pupils, moving between each task effortlessly. It was nurse work and Dean could have told her Castiel's numbers, but he stayed quiet. She wouldn't trust his handiwork even as short staffed as they were.

After she eyeballed the leg encased in plaster checking the pillows it was elevated on, she worked from head to toe, checking first the half healed cuts and burns on Castiel's torso. The angel groaned in pain when she changed the bandages, eyelids fluttering. Dean put his hand on his forehead to try and soothe him, ready to hold him down if necessary. The Doc glanced up but didn't say anything. Not until she unwrapped the brand.

Yesterday she'd only asked the obvious questions, what was hurt, where, how long ago. Today she started with, "How recent is this?" It was an angry red, swollen and full of pus where it had become infected. She had a tube of antibiotic ointment that was practically empty as she tried to squeeze some onto her glove.

"Few weeks," said Dean.

At her first touch, Castiel spasmed, a scream wrenched from his throat that sent the Doc sprawling. Dean threw himself on his shoulders to keep him from jerking and ripping his stitches out.

"Hey, Cas! Hey, it's okay. It's okay." Dean braced his right arm over his hips to keep his leg still. He could feel the angel's labored breathing where his weight pinned him down, punctuated only by soft, keening cries of pain. "It's okay," Dean repeated. Castiel's eyes were clenched shut and tears leaked out of the corners. He was very awake now, and in terrible pain.

His muscles under the brand popped out in an effort to keep his arm still, and Dean reached over and braced his hand on Cas's elbow to help. The brand had started to bleed. It was a modified Sign of Solomon that Sam had burned into his skin to bind Castiel to his host. The angelic grace didn't fit in his too human body. Dean tried not to think about the suffering of both body and soul that was needed to drive such magic. He had nightmares about it anyway, of blood and blades and empty eye sockets. The binding kept Jimmy from dying and Castiel from falling, but it was a sensitive lock.

Cas quieted slowly, his breathing settling into something more natural as his body unknotted itself. Dean eased himself off, and when his left hand once more smoothed out the wrinkles on Cas's forehead, the angel opened his eyes.

He hurt. Over the past weeks, Dean had become accustomed to seeing the once unflappable Castiel in pain, but now there was something helpless in his gaze that Dean recognized. He'd felt that way, once. Still did in many ways because there was no shaking a visit to the Pit.

Dean let his hand slide back through Castiel's hair, like he was Sammy and this was all a bad dream. "You're all right," he said softly. It wasn't true, but Cas accepted it anyway, letting out a deep, shuddering breath and closing his eyes.

The Doc had picked herself up from the floor, her calm exterior shaky. She hung back while Dean pulled the visitor's chair closer so he could sit down and keep his hand on Cas's shoulder. The angel wasn't asleep. He was simply lying still.

"What happened to him?" Her eyes lifted to the trail of torture that couldn't be mistaken for anything but what it was. "Desperation I can understand. A little," she went on when Dean didn't answer. "But this? I don't understand this . . . this butchery."

It took a little longer to recheck all of Castiel's wounds but the Doc did it carefully and with steady hands. For all that things seemed to be crashing down around her, Dean gave her that. A strand of red hair fell out of her messy bun and trailed along her cheek. She was pretty. Too thin, but then everyone was. Dean tried to remember her name but couldn't for the life of him. He wondered if she really wanted an answer or if she was just caught by outrage because one person torturing another was something that only happened in other places.

"There's nothing to understand," said Dean after a while, well after she had forgotten the question. "He was caught by enemies and they wanted to make him pay." Ruby figured there was a bounty on their heads by now because they'd escaped.

"So they tortured him? Branded him?" Her face twisted in disbelief.

"Yes." It was even true after a fashion, but he wasn't about to explain. They had enough problems without Sam being accused of Reckless Artwork, too.

The Doc gritted her teeth and continued in furious silence. She only had to redo a few stitches. When she came to the brand again, she picked up the tube of ointment. "I really need to apply this. Castiel?" She touched his shoulder gently.

Cas cracked his eyes open. "I'm ready," he rasped.

Dean stood again, just in case, but Cas bore it this time in silence though his hand on Dean's side of the bed white-knuckled around the blanket. The Doc dabbed the blood away and applied the antibiotic quickly, and the process left Cas breathing raggedly. When it was done, the Doc stripped off her gloves and murmured something about getting him something for the pain. Dean watched her go, all business until he saw her pause just outside the door.

Castiel was looking at the door, too. "She still has faith," he rasped.

"In what? God?" Dean snorted.

"In people." He sounded surprised.

Dean looked back at the door in time to see the Doc passing the last of the window. Her back was straight and she walked briskly and with purpose. "She's a doctor."

"Hmm." Dean wasn't sure if that meant Cas understood or not. If there was one thing angels didn't get it was people on a one-on-one basis. It was all abstract to Castiel, always had been, as much time as he'd spent on Earth in the last year. When he was curious he still stared too much like a weirdo, trying to see what made people tick as more than just souls wandering around needing salvation.

"It's getting weaker," said Castiel.

"What is?" The bandages were blindingly white and clean.

"The binding." Cas's left arm twitched where the brand was. "Sam did a good job, but it won't last."

It was covered now, like the rest, seeming no more important than the cigarette burns and razor thin cuts. Dean hoped it outlasted their luck. "There's demons in town. Killed a boy." It felt weird telling him this, that Castiel didn't already know there was evil nearby.

"Where's Sam?"

Dean was interrupted from saying that he didn't know by the Doc's return. She brought blue capsule of Tylenol. "I can get you something stronger if you need it," she said but it was clear she'd rather avoid that if possible. "Your cuts are doing fine, except for two that I'm worried about. They're inflamed but I'm not certain they're infected yet so we'll wait and see. Your leg is a compound fracture and the worst damage is the grinding of the edges from walking on it, but I expect it will heal fine as long as it stays immobile for the time being. It's the brand I'm worried about." She paused here, including Dean before going on. "We're practically out of antibiotics. With the panic yesterday, we went through most of our supply of Neosporin and other topical applications. We'll do our best, but . . ."

"Thanks," said Dean when she trailed off.

"You need to eat, too. That will help with recovery." She looked Dean up and down and added, "Both of you."

"Food's a little hard to come by these days."

The Doc looked sad about that. "I know. I'll talk to Eric -" She stopped abruptly. "Well. The Mayor's office. They were supposed to do all this yesterday. Find you a place to stay, but."

"They got a little busy," Dean finished. The panic at the school had messed with everyone's plans apparently.

The Doc nodded, then had to put a hand out quick to steady herself as she suddenly paled. "Sorry, I've gotta . . ." Her hand made the universal sign for _going to puke_ and she rushed from the room. Alarmed, Dean cast a quick glance at Castiel and followed her, catching her as she stumbled into a gurney against the wall as she turned a corner. The bathroom was only a few feet away and since getting her to a toilet was more important than waiting on the nurse who had noticed them and was coming over, Dean helped her inside.

She didn't quite make it, but the splatter only hit Dean's boots so he called it a win. It stank of bile as she upchucked what looked like toast, unsteady on her feet. Dean brushed back her hair that had gotten loose and put a hand on her shoulder. By the time the nurse arrived, she was done, heaves tapering off, and Dean gratefully ceded his place and went to wet a paper towel.

"I'm all right," the Doc told the nurse whose refusal to let go of her elbow said what she thought of that. She accepted the paper towel to wipe her mouth, probably jonesing for a glass of water.

"Did you get any sleep last night?" asked the nurse, worried.

"I went home," said the Doc.

"April. Did you sleep?"

"I'm fine," Doc April repeated, dodging the question. "It's just morning sickness." She gave Dean a slightly uncomfortable but no less defiant look at the admission. Not that Dean had been planning to argue. He was just glad that's what it was, maybe exacerbated by exhaustion, and not something he or Castiel could catch like he'd first feared.

The Doc turned on the faucet and used her hands to cup the water. "I don't need a babysitter. At least not yet." She gave the nurse a pointed look until she gave in and turned for the door.

"I'll go get someone to clean this up." When they followed her out in the hall, the nurse gave April one last disapproving eyebrow, and then headed back to the desk.

It was starting to get awkward. Dean wasn't sure whether to stay or go, and April looked like she was trying not give him an encore. "Thanks," she said after a minute. She took a deep breath, let it out, then did it again.

"Don't mention it."

"Well." The Doc put on a falsely cheerful smile, ready to get back to work. "I have an autopsy to do." He face froze a bit as she realized who she was talking to. "Sorry. I mean . . . Your friend . . ."

"He didn't do it." Dean believed that much of Sam's story. Maybe a month ago, maybe a year. . . Maybe Ruby did it. But if Sam didn't care enough to make sure he didn't accidentally kill a host, he wouldn't care enough to lie to Dean about it.

April nodded but clearly had her doubts. "Did you know him from before?"

The question caught Dean off guard, and he blinked rapidly as the automatic answer caught in his throat. Sam hadn't felt like Sam for a long time now, and he wondered when that had stopped being so strange. He remembered facing down his little brother who hadn't been his brother right then. The two of them the eye of the storm, the tipping point. Sam cursed him out as badly as he ever had when possessed, only this time it wasn't some magic revealing hidden fears and hatred. It had all been Sam, right there, on the surface. "I thought I did," he said quietly.

"April Green! What's this I hear about you not sleeping and making yourself sick?"

They both flinched at the sudden, demanding voice that came from the end of the hallway. One look was all it took for Dean to decide to get the hell out of there. Mom was here, and man, that was fast. April, however, wasn't surprised, only resigned. With her mom on one side and the smug little nurse on the other, the Doc wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Dean stepped out of the metaphorical line of fire. "Good luck," he said with a smile. The Doc smiled wanly in return and went to meet her fate.

* * *

Castiel had fallen into a doze when he got back to the room. He woke enough to see that it was Dean then fell further into sleep.

Sam still hadn't returned. The excitement of the Doc puking her guts up had left Dean feeling restless and antsy. He needed to get out, find Sam, make sure he didn't end up in jail alongside Ruby. Find out who had killed the kid. Plus he was hungry. A knot was filing his stomach that wouldn't go away and only Castiel, completely helpless, with demons wandering around town dressed up as people made Dean hesitate in going to find himself a burger. Or whatever they had left to eat in Jericho. Pickings on the road had been slimmer than slim and only the blessing of vacuum sealed packaging had kept them going.

Damn Sam. He'd been gone for the better part of an hour now. Dean really wished cell phones worked because he really wanted to yell at his brother to hurry his ass up.

He turned from the window and startled when he saw the man in the doorway. He'd been there that morning with the Mayor; Sam had talked to him and he'd hustled out that guy, Gray, who wanted to string them up for the kid's murder. Dean hadn't heard him come in and he shot a quick glance at Cas, but he was still asleep. Dressed in layers of clothes and work boots that had been worn hard, Dean wouldn't be surprised if the guy had a gun tucked away somewhere.

"I need some answers," he said without preamble when he had Dean's attention. He looked like a man who was used to getting them and wasn't going to accept "no". Not possessed, Dean decided, he didn't have the right kind of arrogance, but he wasn't a man to mess with. Dean hadn't gotten his name last time.

"Oh yeah?" Dean came around Cas's bed, crossed his arms across his chest, and put on his best smirk.

The guy had dark hair and dark eyes and wasn't impressed. "Where's Sam?"

"Not here. What do you want?"

The guy looked him up and down as he stepped fully into the room and closed the door. "There's some men on the edge of town that want us to hand over you and your brother. Sam is your brother, right?"

Fuck. Dean had hoped their luck would have lasted a little bit longer, and calling them out . . . the town was already suspicious, he didn't want to think of their chances if they were all out against them. Due process was a thing of the past, and fuck them for being too stupid and too scared to get their heads out of their asses.

"Yeah," he said carefully, keeping as much off his face as he could but not sure he'd succeeded. "Did they say why?"

The guy held himself carefully, shifting his feet. "Said you killed one of their guys."

It wasn't a question, but it was there between them anyway. Dean thought about forcing him to ask, itching for a fight - he could take him, whatever training the guy had it wouldn't stand up to Dean - but Cas was behind him and it was probably a bad idea.

Still, he was sick of this bullshit. He said, "He deserved what he got." As much as the method scared him, he wouldn't deny that. "He was holding that dead kid out there hostage."

"That's not what you said before."

"Yeah, well, before it was looking like a Mexican standoff out there with you people accusing us of killing the kid that Sam _helped_, so excuse me for wanting to keep the death and destruction under the radar. " Dean glared and to his surprise the guy softened and nodded, his whole posture relaxing a fraction because lines had been crossed and he knew it.

"Did he have black eyes?" Dean asked. "The guy who wants us dead?"

The questioned puzzled the guy, threw him off balance enough to make him tilt his head and frown. "Couldn't tell. He said his name was Monty and to tell you that you won't hold them off forever. That there was no stopping them."

He paused and there was something else, but he was waiting for Dean to react, which was stupid because it was stupid message. Could have come out of the Evil Villain's Handbook only without the helpful monologue. What exactly were they supposed to be holding back? Besides the obvious.

"I got the feeling he wasn't going to take no for an answer," the Mayor's man went on. "He was . . ."

Dean couldn't help the twisted smile that he knew wasn't funny or reassuring at all. "Creepy as fuck," he said. "Pure evil. Looking at you like he wanted to eat you alive."

"Yeah."

It was the kind of look that made your soul curdle, and Dean wished suddenly that this guy had been spared that. He rubbed his hands over his face. "What's your name?" This town. Christ, what he wouldn't give for them to catch a break, just once. Have a little time to lick their wounds, or God forbid, heal. _You hear that, you bastard?_ Dean thought.

"Jake." Sam's Jake. Dean's hands dropped.

"Well, Jake, sounds like we got you into the middle of our mess." Dean tried to smile but he didn't think it worked out too well. "Sorry."

Jake remained silent and watched him, for what Dean didn't know. He was so tired. For all that they hadn't destroyed the world yet, Lilith and her demons had done a pretty good job, nonetheless. And Dean had done a pretty good job of fucking up the opposition. He didn't know how close they were to falling the rest of the way, and now with the world beaten into smithereens, he didn't think they could stop it. There had been seven Seals left when they made it to Wyoming and then one more was gone along with half the angels and demons that fought there. Castiel too, and watching him breathe in this neat little hospital bed, Dean couldn't shake the smell of fire and brimstone, sulfur and blood.

"What's the mess?" asked Jake insistently from the door. His tone jerked Dean out of his thoughts, surprising him into looking up, searching for what he meant. It took Dean a second to see it. There was a fire burning in Jake that he didn't feel himself anymore.

Fucking heroes. "An old feud. One we can't seem to get away from."

"Can't or won't?" asked Jake, taking two steps forward. "If it's coming to Jericho, I need to know about it. I won't let this town get run over for some grudge match. Now tell me what's going on, why I've got someone accusing you of a murder I don't know you didn't commit, and what I can expect to come next."

This town was still here and it looked like Jake meant to protect it.

But Dean didn't know how to answer. Before it would have been easy. Expect every friend to turn into a foe until you were swamped with demons too strong to fight and too not-human to care about the bullets you were using to kill the host. Before, towards the end, most demons had kept clear of them out of fear of Sam. But that was a month ago, and these demons were already here, up to something. General mayhem or a seal, Dean had no way of knowing. Either way, now that they knew the four of them were in town, the price on Ruby and Castiel would be a strong enticement to go fishing, and that changed the game from offense to defense.

"We'll need our weapons back," he said finally, because if there was one thing he knew right now was that he felt naked. "And Ruby, she'll be a target. If they come looking for us, your guys might be able to stop the rest of the gang but you won't be able to stop Monty and he'll kill you if you try." Monty was a stupid name, and Sam needed to get his ass back here.

"Why Ruby?" asked Jake.

"'Cause that's who Monty wants. Her and Cas." Dean riffled through his pockets for the charms he knew he'd tucked away. They might have been in his pack.

"He never mentioned them," said Jake. "I don't think he knows they're here."

Dean stopped short. "What?"

"He only ever mentioned you and Sam to anyone, and how he knew you were here -"

"He didn't say anything about Castiel? At all?"

"No." Jake glanced at the sleeping angel, confusion and suspicion clear on his face. "What's going on? Why do they want him?"

"Because he escaped," said Dean, still turning the rest over in his head. Where did they think Ruby had taken Castiel if not with them? If they were in town though, it would only be a matter of time until they did know they were there. It gave them a little breathing space maybe. Fuck.

"Dean," Jake's voice cut into his thoughts. "What's going on? Who did he get away from?" His eyes flickered to Cas and over the damage that was done.

Dean couldn't deal with all this right now. There was no good way to explain the real apocalypse that was going on. "Look, Jake -"

"Give me one good reason not to kick you out of town."

Jake was frustrated and dead serious, caught between what was right and what was necessary. The look he was giving Dean reminded him suddenly of Sam in Omaha, looming large in Dean's face.

And Sam was powerful, a force of nature. All Dean had been able to do in the end was get in Sam's way so he wouldn't throw himself away for a lost cause.

He saw that same determination in Jake as he waited for an answer. Dean gave him the only one he could. "Cas will die."

"He could stay."

"They'll find him. And I'm not letting them get their hands on him again." The memory of that first night when Castiel's screams reverberated through his own chest as he held him echoed like a phantom pain. His muscles all tensed up as he remembered his own.

After a minute, Jake broke his intense stare, pacing two steps away and back, suddenly just a man and not an enemy ready to throw them to the wolves.

"I'm sorry," he said when he stopped. Dean felt his own hackles drop, and noticed for the first time how tired Jake looked. It wasn't exactly bags and circles under his eyes, but they way his whole body slumped as soon as he let his guard down.

"I'm sorry, too," he said again, then, "Did you know him? The kid that got killed?"

Jake shook his head. "Not really. I may have met him once or twice." He sighed, hands coming to rest on his hips. "His family's been devastated. His girlfriend said they were going to get married. He didn't deserve this."

Dean closed his eyes briefly. None of them did. Not Jake, not Doc April and her baby, not those people who stampeded each other yesterday, not the boy Sam had tried to save. "These guys. They move with purpose. If we can figure out what they want here without handing ourselves over on a silver platter, we might be able to do something about them."

Jake eyed him skeptically. "You knew as soon as Brandon showed up dead," he accused though he didn't move.

Dean didn't say anything. Let Jake assume what he would. Cas was still asleep, knocked out well and good by the Tylenol.

"I won't be the last coming to ask questions," Jake finally said. His gaze had followed Dean's to Castiel, but it looked like he was seeing someone else. When he looked up and met Dean's eyes there was a moment of understanding. Jake was going to bat for them. Why, Dean could only guess, but he had a feeling that at one point it had been Jake standing where he was.

"Thanks," said Dean, for more than the warning.

"Take care of him." Jake nodded at the bed, gave Dean on last considering look, then left. Dean watched him go through the window. He had to find Sam. He needed to get their weapons back. He needed food. He didn't want to leave Cas alone, but better now while the demons didn't know he was here.

* * *

Jericho was like a ghost town. Most of the shops were boarded up tight. There was evidence of looting everywhere and the people who were out and about were huddled up on themselves. Dean was the last to admit he was lost - he was pretty sure he could find his way back to the hospital - but he sure as hell wasn't finding Sam. What he wouldn't give for his car, and it hit him hard as it had every once in while since they'd left her behind, that he wasn't going to see her again. His girl. And Christ, he had to stop walking and look up at the sky with its too bright sun pricking at his eyes. They'd abandoned her and it felt like betrayal, eating at the edges of the hole in his heart.

The universe sure knew how to kick a guy when he was down. Dean took a deep breath; what was done was done. He had had no choice. For what ever fucked up values, he still had Sam, he repeated to himself. Sam and Cas and fucking Ruby.

It was the sound of gunfire that put him in the right direction. Alarmed, he broke into a run and followed the noise, coming to a halt when he arrived at the fire station. At first Dean was confused because it was a tiny little station and there were people spilling out into the street looking not at all concerned, but as he approached slowly he saw that they were organized, that they were training. Jericho's little citizen army, and from the look of them, too many were in over their heads.

A few people from a nearby group looked up when he passed and snapped back into attention when the old man in charge - Marine, Dean would lay money on it - yelled for, "Eyes front and center." There were seven or eight groups scattered about. On the edge of the garage, he recognized the man who'd let them into town talking with four others. His voice carried easily across the street. "I wish you'd reconsider."

"We have to think of our families," said the shortest man speaking for the foursome. They shook hands and after they left, the old vet caught Dean watching with a steely eye and Dean moved on.

Main Street wasn't far and the noise of people going about what little business was left was enough to get him there. The grocery store was crowded and Dean was tempted to go in and find something to eat but seeing that everyone went in with something tucked under their arms, he didn't.

He did find the bar though, and in it Sam. It wasn't crowded but there were more people than Dean would have expected for lunch time. The bartender was talking with one of her other customers, but her eyes tracked him as he came in. He slid onto the stool next to Sam who didn't look up.

Neither one of them said anything for a minute. To Dean it felt like the calm before the storm, like telling Sam about Monty would crack it all open with Sam going off for blood and Dean being left behind to make sure they survived.

Sam took a sip of something that Dean could smell from a foot away. When he set it down, he nudged it over to Dean. It burned as hard it promised to.

"There's a demon on the border who called us out," he said quietly. "Just you and me. They want the town to turn us over or else."

Sam absorbed the news in silence. "Getting humans to do their dirty work."

His voice was level, steady. "Don't go off chasing him down -"

"I know what I can handle, Dean."

"And you don't know how many there are, so -"

"I know," Sam snapped, finally looking at him. "I wasn't planning on chasing after him. Would it kill you to trust me?"

Dean took another long drink of the moonshine and didn't answer. He hated where they were now, remembered when trust had been as natural as breathing, but now . . . Now trust was a lot to ask. Their fingers didn't touch when he passed the glass back. Sam drained it.

"I found the library," he said. "It burned down; the inside's gutted. The people I talked to didn't know where the books that survived have gone."

"So you got nothing."

"I got us food." He kicked Dean's leg and Dean looked down to see the bag there, smiling reflexively because one thing had gone right at least.

"God, I'm starving. Please tell me there's pie in there. Or Twinkies. Twinkies are supposed to survive a nuclear holocaust, right?"

Sam twisted to give him a disbelieving look over his shoulder as Dean fished up the bag to rifle through the goodies - canned vegetables mostly - and Dean was suddenly thrown back a year - two, three - by the exasperated smile that managed to escape. Sam irritated and fond of him all at once. "No," he said, and it felt like a stolen moment. "No Twinkies."

"Buzz kill," Dean muttered just to see Sam roll his eyes.

But Sam ruined the mood a second later by standing. "We should ward Castiel's room and get our weapons back." He took a can of tomatoes from the bag in front of Dean without looking at him. "I'm going to go track down whatever's left of the library."

Dean watched him go. Always watching Sam leave, that was him.

"Can I get you anything else?" The bartender had come over. She had curly hair and a wary smile that Dean returned with honey a beat late. It felt sickly on his face.

Too much to do. Too little time. Their reprieve was gone and it felt like the hounds were circling, hunting closer, like their howls were just on the edge of hearing. Dean wanted . . . but he couldn't. _Stand up, soldier._

Better to tackle the easy problem first.

"Yes, you can," he said staying just this side of leering. The bartender wasn't buying it, but that was okay with Dean because now she saw him as the type of problem she could handle. "I need chalk and salt. Where would I find that around here these days?"


	4. Part III

_Never shall I fail my comrades I will always keep myself mentally alert, physically strong, and morally straight and I will shoulder more than my share of the task whatever it may be, one hundred percent and then some.  
\--- Ranger's Creed_

* * *

When Jake left City Hall, Hawkins followed him. He'd sat quietly in the background while Jake reported to Dad and Eric on both the encounter at the border and on his conversation with Dean, and Jake couldn't help wondering what his take on all this was.

Hawkins was one of those men whose eyes knew more than the rest of him let on. He was good at hiding it, no more than an ex-cop to pretty much everyone, but Jake had seen enough to know that there was more to that story than he probably wanted to know. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. If Hawkins was no more than a disguise, so far the disguise had proved to be shrewd, smart, and damn helpful, and whatever he was hiding could stay hidden for all Jake cared.

They were halfway down Main Street when Hawkins said, "You have more than a gut feeling about these guys?"

"I'd rather back the guys who gave us their guns to get help for their friend than the one who brought a bunch of armed men to get what he wants."

"That only proves that they're smarter. Foxes in the hen house."

They walked briskly, keeping pace down the center of the road. Other people were around but they kept to the sidewalks out of habit. Jake raised his eyebrows. "You want to turn them over?"

"No, I think you're right," said Hawkins with a hint of his broad smile that didn't reach his eyes. "The question is, are you ready for what happens next?"

They shared a long look, both knowing the answer. It was no. When Ravenwood came calling they'd had the river and the bridge to blow. The west side had no such natural protections; they were wide open. A point made even more apparent when they got to the firehouse and the first thing Paul did was ask to speak with Jake in the still vacant Chief's Office; the chief and the firemen who'd gone to Denver after the fallout still hadn't returned.

"Lost four more today," said Paul once the door was closed. "We're down to one fifty eight and another handful on the fence." Paul was his father's age, balding and sporting a neatly trimmed beard that was more silver than gray. He'd been a Staff Sergeant by the time he got out of Vietnam and by all rights should be in charge of the whole outfit they were putting together. But while he did run most of the training, he still looked to Jake for the decisions. "Young man's game," was all he'd said when Jake asked him why.

The map of the county was tacked to the wall behind the desk along with the lists and rosters. Ideal coverage of three checkpoints on the major roads, watch points for back roads, two patrol routes to cover thirty miles of their border that was prairie, hill, and wood. To man it all twenty four hours a day, they needed one hundred and fifty Rangers. Right now while they were training from the ground up, they were manning only the checkpoints and had one patrol doing the two routes. Needless to say their coverage was far from ideal.

"They say why?" Jake turned his back on the map.

"Worried about their families for the most part. Thing at the school shook a lot of people up." Paul shrugged. "I'm not sad to see a few of them go."

Suited to be a Ranger or not, they couldn't afford to lose anybody.

"Where is this Monty coming from?" asked Hawkins.

"West. That's where we met him, on 56." Jake pointed to the pin stuck in the map. "That's where we've been getting reports of thefts."

"Just past, on Chesterfield was where Brandon Hanson's body was found," added Paul.

"That's where they'll strike. They know the area already." Hawkins went up close to the map, eyes tracing the elevation contours that were cut by the grid of roads. "If they've already been preying on the farms, giving them the Winchesters won't stop them. It'll be an invitation."

"We can set up a second patrol," said Paul. "But to cover with enough people who know what they're doing, we'll have to pull them from somewhere else."

"They hit the Riker farm at night," added Jake. "We're down to one-fifty-eight?"

"And I expect it'll be less tomorrow."

"Service is a hard thing to ask of people." Hawkins was still staring at the map, but his tone was contemplative, talking more to himself than them. Jake didn't have time to worry about it. He needed people now and he couldn't wait for them to decide it was worth it. If they wanted Jericho to be safe they had to do more than wish it so. There were no easy answers anymore.

Outside, target practice was still going on around back. Spillover from the conference room had platoons learning first aid out in the street. It was maybe something they shouldn't be wasting their time on, but they were the emergency services now. They were going to be out there with horses and rickety vehicles that had survived the EMP by virtue of being old. His people were nervous. Scared. It was already turning into trial by fire and it was only going to get worse. Brandon's body had eroded the moral boost of starting something new and worthwhile with the Rangers. No longer a near miss, they were playing for keeps and everyone was just coming to realize that.

"Let's look at the schedule again." Jake wasn't going to abandon the western farms.

It took them an hour to figure out a workable solution that would mix veterans with rookies and put more boots on the ground. They were going to be asking a lot of everyone, but Jake didn't see a choice. He wished they had the resources to send someone out looking for Monty's gang, find out where they were, if they were really operating out of the west or if they had contact with Jonah and his men in the industrial area on the east side of Jericho near the tracks.

Jake looked over the final lists spread out on the desk looking for better numbers to pop out at him. They didn't, of course, and Jake sighed and rubbed his eyes. Over by the window, Hawkins stopped mid-stretch. "Something's going on." A commotion that had formed in the street around a couple kids who'd come running to find their parents. Training stopped completely as the Rangers gathered around.

By the time Jake, Paul, and Hawkins got out there, Steve Willis, a man Jake remembered vaguely from high school, had scooped up one kid and had a hold of the hand of the other.

"Can't stay, Jake," he said when he saw them approaching.

"What happened?" The Rangers were full of nervous energy and many were preparing to follow.

"Kids from the trailer park are throwing rocks through windows," said Cyrus who was standing in the front row of the circle that had formed. "They're attacking people."

"My wife . . ." Steve looked at his son who had buried his face in his father's shoulder.

"They were yelling and screaming." The other boy had big bewildered eyes. "They want our food. They think we stole it. We didn't steal anything!"

An alarmed murmur swelled through the gathered men and women. "We gotta hurry!" "We'll take the trucks!" The Rangers were dissolving, and Jake knew with sudden clarity that if they disappeared now it was going to be the death of the border patrol.

"Hey! Quiet!" Jake shouted in his best carrying voice that snapped over everyone else and caught them enough by surprise that they stopped.

"We gotta go, Jake," said Steve into the pause. "I'm not leaving my family in the middle of that."

"Isn't that why we're here? To protect Jericho," someone else called out. They were on the verge of breaking and Jake couldn't let that happen. His radio crackled and he passed it to Hawkins before diving in before he lost them.

"No," he said loudly and added quickly, "We are not a mob. You hear me? Not a mob."

"Jake - " Cyrus started but Jake cut him off.

"We go in there, we do it in an orderly fashion and not with guns blazing." He locked eyes with Steve. "You volunteered to be Rangers. I expect you to act like it." He moved on, meeting the eyes of Cyrus and the others who'd spoken up. In his chest, his heart was pounding. This was it. If they decided to go anyway, they were done. "Fall into your platoons." His voice didn't betray that there was any other choice.

"Fall in!" Paul shouted behind him.

There was a pregnant pause full of shifting feet and sidelong looks. No one wanted to move first.

"We will go." Jake looked Steve in the eye. He was scared, fearing disaster just out of sight. "But not like this." It felt like an eternity before Steve nodded, almost imperceptibly, but it was acquiescence nonetheless. "Fall in," Jake repeated at normal levels to the group and then stepped back to give them space that was more mental than physical to decide what they were going to do.

A collective sigh went out, a beast exhaling, and the Rangers formed up. Loosely, in puddles clustered around their platoon leaders instead of squares, but organized and stationary which was the only thing Jake cared about.

He took two platoons, including Steve's, that weren't scheduled to go on Border duty at three. They piled into two of the trucks leaving the third for getting to the checkpoints, and Jake claimed the driver's seat of one to keep his hands from shaking off with a firm grip on the wheel. He kept seeing them leave as a mob with the guns he'd given them, the mess at the Med Center a thousand times worse than yesterday's stampede.

"You handled that well," said Hawkins once they were on their way. It was just the two of them in cab.

The comment startled a disbelieving laugh out of Jake for being a one-eighty of his thoughts. His hands eased up on the wheel, though, because they weren't a mob. Officially they were Rangers called in by the deputies to help calm down a lot of upset folks. "I don't know what I'm doing."

Hawkins gave him a closed mouth grin. "Whatever it is, it's working. Seat of your pants or not, Jake, it's why you got the job."

Hawkins had turned back to the window, as inscrutable as ever, and Jake kept shooting him looks, trying to figure out what he meant by that. He got the job because he told his dad they needed a sanctioned defense force. Jericho was in enough chaos that there hadn't been anyone else to step up and get something for the border organized. He might know a little better than most what good security meant, but that didn't mean he thought of himself as the man in charge. That had sort of happened without him realizing it.

The crowd started at the sign that said in bright cursive "the Pines" at the main throughway into the upscale neighborhood. There were probably seventy or eighty people, gathered into two camps that were clearly delineated: frightened, angry middle class homeowners blocking the road and loud, angry and newly homeless residents who'd been getting by however they could after the fire swept through the trailer park. Dad, Eric and the deputies were already there, shouting for everyone to settle down when Jake pulled up and parked the truck right dab in the center. Their arrival stilled the crowd momentarily and made them take a step back from each other. The Rangers dismounted carefully and Jake walked among them with quiet instructions to spread out and not shoot anyone.

And then someone threw a rock and all hell broke loose. Time seemed to slow and Jake could see it happen in slow motion. A group of kids was the heart of it, charging forward with pipes and branches behind the teenage girl who led them. In a piercing formation they headed right for the Rangers, screaming in incoherent rage. Then time snapped back and Jake had enough time to shout "Don't fire!" before they were upon them.

It was an all out brawl that the mobs on either side quickly joined. The Rangers used their rifles as clubs to defend themselves with and didn't shoot the kids, but it would only be a matter of time before one went off and this turned into a massacre. There was shouting coming from the deputies, but in the thick of it, Jake could barely hear it. He was busy pulling his guys into some kind of order, trying to protect the truck, and find the leaders. It was a nightmare of mass and movement, loud and confusing with bodies jostling against everyone with no way to tell who was who. Jake saw a snatch of an arm before it collided with his chest, a flash of a jacket spinning out of view, a bearded face shout at him before being lost in the crowd. A thousand tiny snapshots before moving on to the next one.

There was no plan and it was too noisy for shouting instructions. Maybe ten minutes had passed, maybe an hour, when the shots went off. Bang, bang. Two of them cut through the chaos that only stuttered before taking on a new fury as panic set in. There was new direction to the mass in an effort to get away from the guns. Jake, at the knot around the truck, saw the edges thin, leaving behind those too angry to run. There was a call to arms from the teenagers who'd started it all, kids that were twice as mad and revved by the prospect of taking down the tyrants.

The girl who'd led the charge, tall and leggy, red hair wild around her face, had a feral look in her eye in the pause that had fallen over the empty space that was suddenly between her and the truck. She smiled cruelly, eyes unnaturally dark, and Jake felt a frisson of fear as her gaze fell on him. It was unnatural and the blackest look he'd had directed at him in a long while, disconcerting and more terrifying for being on the face of this kid. She raised her fist, a bloody rock shining wetly in her grip.

"Don't shoot!" Jake repeated his order to the Rangers still standing. Their numbers seemed cut in half but they were still armed, several of them with butts to shoulders, but that didn't mean Jake was about to let them shoot any kids, no matter how mad they were or how terrifying a trick of the light might make them seem. Mobs did strange things to the brain. It was a split second thought, however, because the teenagers were charging again with the redhead in the lead, throwing themselves into to fight with the immortality of youth.

When the shooting started again it was more noise that was secondary to the piece of railing that was being swung at Jake's head, distant at the far end of the crowd, then suddenly up close.

"Don't fire!" he shouted. Two bodies dropped and not from blows. It was a wild mess and the noise twisted again to screaming. The red headed girl was in front of Jake, face twisted in bloodthirsty rage, rock ready to strike when her head jerked around suddenly, searching, and the rage flashed into fear. Jake didn't have time to do more than register the change before he was knocked from his feet by what felt like a shockwave. His head rebounded off the ground, sending sparks through his skull as he wondered inanely why he hadn't heard the explosion.

Jake wasn't the only one on the ground. A stunned quiet fell over the mob that was suddenly laid flat on its back. Crying and moans of pain accompanied the pounding in his head. He felt shaken to his bones, rattled like a window in a tornado, and only the urgent need to keep the sudden peace had Jake pushing himself to his knees. Jake wasn't the only one who was picking himself up, still keyed to the fight, but most were still down, either cowering or regaining the good sense they once had before this mess exploded.

He swayed slightly, asphalt digging into his kneecaps, when he saw the girl stagger to her feet. "You!" She spat; a glob of blood landed at her feet. There wasn't anyone immediately around and Jake's vision was off enough that he couldn't make out more than that there were a handful of people standing where the blast had come from. One of them raised his arm to wave, but the girl screamed and Jake forgot all about him.

Something black and cloudy was bubbling about her. With the pounding in his head, it had to be spots but they didn't move when he looked away. It was coming out of her, he realized.

Then it was over and she collapsed, like a puppet with her strings cut. Jake met the wide eyed stare of the boy sitting up across from him, and knew he'd seen it, too. Her eyes had been solid black.

At the edge of the crowd, Jake saw Sam Winchester drop his hand.

* * *

After that things got a little blurry. Jake's ears were still ringing and he wasn't sure how much time had passed between the girl falling and Dad finding him, his hand on Jake's shoulder squeezing too hard. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd witnessed something important, but it had to have been from hitting his head. That was the only explanation.

"Jake, can you hear me? Are you hurt?"

He blinked at his father. He'd been at the edge of the mob and wasn't significantly hurt. "I'm fine." Jake aborted the headshake to clear his head when it pounded in protest. God, he probably had a concussion. It sure felt like it.

"Just sit down." Dad's hands were firm on his shoulders as they pushed him back down. The noise around them had picked up as those able to help went to those who needed it. Dad was already being shouted for by a dozen people. Off at the edge, Hawkins and Eric had cornered Sam who had his hands raised in the universal sign of talking down the crazy people, and Jimmy and Bill were subduing a knot of people shouting out accusations about police brutality. The Rangers who'd been at the center of it all were slowly getting to their feet, helping the injured, and quelling fights at this end. There were a lot of kids down.

Pushing off Dad's hands, Jake clambered to his feet. "I'm all right. Go." Dad ignored him, of course.

"Not until you're in that truck."

"I'll make it on my own."

"And get distracted half a dozen times between here and there." Dad took his elbow, gripping too hard.

Jake appreciated the concern, really, but he gently removed himself from Dad's grip and looked him the eye, startled by the worry he saw there that was so unlike his father to show. "I'm fine," he said. "Just a little shaken up. Do you know what happened?"

Dad's worry didn't clear but his frown said he was wise to the distraction. Nevertheless, he simply patted Jake on the arm one more time and said, "A bunch of people arrived from the school and then a bomb went off. That's all we can figure for now until we can get these people up and out of here. Including you." He was holding something back but he didn't give Jake a chance to call him on it either. "As soon as you're settled I've got to find Jason Davenport and settle this mess. That man has been a thorn in my side that's getting pulled out."

It was only because Paul showed up with more help, and the fact that he felt like he'd been put through a meat grinder that Jake gave in and hobbled to the closest truck where those who could walk were loading those who couldn't. Dad let himself be dragged away and he was thoroughly distracted by the time Jake had recovered enough to lend a hand himself.

It was still chaos, but a more orderly chaos. The injuries were more severe than yesterday's but there were fewer people involved. Jake tasked half of his able Rangers with shuttling people to the Med Center, the other half he put to helping the deputies round up the ring leaders who hadn't quite figured out it was over. The whole riot had lasted maybe half an hour in real time, but Jake felt every second of it in every battered bone of his body.

Two people had been shot at close range, a woman in her forties and a boy who couldn't have been more than fifteen. Both were bleeding but not dead. Five more were unconscious from head trauma, and they were all rushed to the Med Center in the other truck. Surveying the scene where more people were still sitting dazed on the ground than on their feet, Jake could barely tell what side they'd been on, and couldn't help but feel that they had gotten off very lucky.

Sudden movement from the center of the road caught Jake's attention. It was the red haired girl; she'd woken up. The wild fury was gone as she flinched away from the woman - one of the high school teachers - who was trying to help her. "No, no, no!" She sobbed, stumbling and striking out like a wounded animal. She jerked as she bumped into Cyrus who'd come up on her other side and fell over herself trying to get away.

"Hey!" It was Sam who'd called out. He'd gotten away from Hawkins and Eric and was hurrying over to get between Cyrus and the girl. "Give her space."

Hawkins trailed behind, careful to keep his gun loose and pointed down as if he wasn't carrying, while around them people stopped to watch.

"Move along folks," Dad's baritone said firmly, getting the gawkers moving as he strode through them like a dog through a flock of birds. "We still have people to help." He was looking at Sam oddly, however, glancing between him and Hawkins and Eric who had also come forward, three points of a triangle, waiting and watching with more than a little trepidation to see what Sam would do, wary of stopping him.

Jake knew then that he wasn't wrong. This whole thing centered around Sam. He'd done . . . something. Saying the girl had bled black smoke from her mouth, nose, and ears didn't make any sense, but that's what Jake had seen. That had happened.

Sam pushed Cyrus back and crouched a good ten feet from the girl. She paused at his voice, looking up for the first time and instead of trying to get away, stared at Sam, eyes not moving from his face while he talked.

Jake shuffled closer until Sam's rumble turned into words. "I'm sorry," he kept repeating, voice soft and unthreatening. His nose was bleeding badly but he didn't seem to notice. "I know what it's like. You're trapped and screaming and no one can hear you and you can't do a thing about it. You can only watch. It's not your fault. Remember that, okay? It wasn't you and it's not your fault. I'm so sorry." On his knees, Sam inched closer. "You're safe now. He's dead and you're safe now. He won't ever come back."

It took maybe ten minutes - it felt like longer - then Sam was only a few feet away. He reached out his hand, palm up and empty, still apologizing, telling her she was safe now. She took his hand.

* * *

Getting Sam to cooperate wasn't a problem. Back at the Med Center, amidst even more confusion, he didn't blink twice when Eric told him to come with him and Jimmy. He glanced at the more than suggestive weapons they carried and passed off the girl to a nurse with a few murmured words that Jake was too busy fending off his mother to hear.

"Mom, I'm fine." He kept her at arms length but she was giving him that Look that was about two seconds from giving him a piece of her mind that included everything he'd ever put her through.

"You're bleeding."

"It's a scratch."

"Don't you give me that crap." She pushed his hands away and got under his guard, grabbed his head, and turned it, fingers carding away the hair at the back where he'd struck the ground.

"Ow, Mom!" Tender didn't begin to describe it, and she was short enough that the angle wasn't doing anything for his neck either.

"Oh, be quiet," she said even as her grip gentled. "You need stitches."

What he needed was to find Dean Winchester before the next crisis hit so they could get some answers. "I don't have time for stitches."

He finally managed to get away with butterfly bandages and a promise that he would get his head looked at as soon as he was done with the meeting.

"If you're looking for Dean, he's helping in the emergency room," she said with a meaningful glance over his shoulder where Sam was disappearing down the hall with Eric.

"Right." It surprised him after watching Sam but not Dean help out yesterday. Jake left Mom with a kiss to her forehead and hurried off. It took longer than he expected to get through the crowds, but eventually he made it and found Dean in the hallway coaxing a teenager to hold still while he swabbed at his bloody face. "You're gonna have a wicked scar," he was saying. A suture kit sat on the gurney beside the kid who hissed at the sting of the alcohol.

Dean glanced up when Jake stopped beside him and said, "I need you to come with me. As soon as you're done." He look curiously at Jake, taking in the dirt and blood his mom had just been fussing over.

"Give me a minute," he said before returning his attention to the cut down the side of the teenager's face. He worked quickly and smoothly, and the boy, sensing the tension kept quiet until Dean was done taping gauze over the stitches. Fighters and medics both of them, Jake thought, maybe ex-soldiers or less reassuring, ex-mercenaries.

Dean preceded Jake till the way cleared before asking where they were going.

"City Hall."

Dean stopped abruptly. "I'm not leaving."

He was an inch taller than Jake who got up in his face, sick and tired of all the bullshit. "I'm not giving you a choice." Dean's eyes flickered down, and even if he wasn't impressed by the threat Jake posed, he wasn't stupid.

"Where's Sam?"

Jake let the silence speak for itself and didn't move until Dean did, jaw clenching and clearly furious. "Son of a bitch. What happened?"

Jake hesitated, then settled for, "We're not sure."

Dean swore again. "All right. Give me a minute. I gotta tell Cas."

The room was dark and Castiel was asleep. Dean shook him awake. So far, other patients hadn't been loaded in here, probably thanks to Dean's constant presence. Jake waited in the doorway for them to finish their hushed conversation, shifting off his bad leg to ease the pain that had flared up. Something crunched under his feet unexpectedly, and looking down, he couldn't make sense of it at first. Salt, he realized when he touched it. It was everywhere. Across the doorway, on the window sills, around the bed. What the hell was salt doing in here? Jake couldn't think of one reason why anyone would lay out salt like this, deliberately.

When Dean finished and stood, he stared down at him for a second then flickered his gave over the rest of the room as if seeing it through Jake's eyes. "Superstition," he said briskly when Jake lifted his eyebrows, waiting. "Thought it couldn't hurt." He didn't wait for Jake to move out of the way before pushing the salt back into a solid line with his boot. "We going?"

* * *

Dean wanted to see Sam but there was no way that was happening until they had a chance to question him. This was no longer a friendly dealing with refugees. Ridley took Dean to the conference room to wait but Sam was in the cell with Ruby - at his own request - and they saw each other down the hall anyway.

Sam stood when he saw Dean, arms resting lightly on the bars. He still had a rag in his hand for his nose that wouldn't stop bleeding. Dean jerked himself out of Ridley's grip and stopped, taking two steps closer before Ridley caught his elbow, eyes glued on his brother.

"Fuck, Sammy," he said. "You're kidding me."

"Wish I was. Middle of town."

"Let's go." Ridley tugged on Dean's arm. He ignored it, planted like a tree until Ridley practically body checked him into moving.

"Hey." Dean called to him over his shoulder

"No choice."

Dean scowled. "Fine. Don't fuck it up."

"What was that?" Eric came out of the Sheriff's office in time to hear the last exchange, a notebook in his hand. Jake gave him a look that spoke the same volumes that they'd just missed between the Winchesters.

"Brothers, remember?"

There was a beat and then Eric smiled, although it quickly faded away as he watched Ridley come back out and go down the hall to let Sam out. He and Ruby stopped talking when he got within earshot.

"Did you see something out there, Jake?" Eric asked quietly, uncertain and maybe looking for confirmation.

Jake paused, the question throwing him off not because he didn't have an answer, but because Eric was looking at him like he had when he was ten, looking for reassurance that he wouldn't get in trouble for breaking Ms. Lillian's front window. Eric didn't get rattled, and that bothered Jake more than anything else he'd seen today. "I don't know." It still felt like a waking dream.

The main doors opened behind them, letting in a draft of cold air. "Are they here yet?" It was Dad. When Jake had left the Med Center, Dad had still been tied up with unhappy parents and distraught homeowners. No one was happy, and Jake had been grateful for Mom's pestering getting him out of dealing with it.

Hawkins won the bickering of who got to interview Sam by stint of being a big city cop who'd actually interrogated people for more than harassment and broken fence disputes before. That didn't stop Dad, Eric, or Jake from following him into the office they'd emptied out for the interview.

Sam was already seated and watched them come in and spread out along the back wall, a small, disbelieving smile on his face. Unimpressed, he sat back in his chair and focused on Hawkins who stopped behind the empty chair across from Sam, arms crossed over his chest.

He didn't say anything right away and Sam seemed content to let him stare. Beside Jake, Eric was the first to give in to the tension, shifting his weight from foot to foot, diverting Sam's attention. He huffed and raised his eyebrows at Hawkins. "Any day now."

Hawkins didn't even twitch. "Tell me what happened out there. During the riot."

"What did you see?"

"Why don't you tell me?"

Sam's gaze wandered over to Jake for a minute. "Dean told me some people out of town were asking about us. I think one of them started the riot."

"That's impossible," said Eric. "Everyone who was there was from town, except you."

Hawkins sent Eric a quick reminder to shut up over his shoulder, but followed up his statement. "You weren't even there for the start of it."

"I was there for the end. Look, what did you see?" Sam leaned forward. He was still the only one seated and he was including all of them in his question.

"What were you doing there?" Hawkins stepped into his line of sight. "Last I heard you were at the Med Center."

"I was at the school, looking for the library."

"And when you heard the shots, you came running."

"With the rest of the teachers, yeah," said Sam. "And then I stopped the riot." It was a bold statement, daring Hawkins to challenge it, knowing he couldn't. They all felt it. Every one of them who'd been there.

"I saw you throw something at the mob," Hawkins finally broke the drawn out quiet. "It sent a shockwave that knocked everyone down and it hit the girl at the center and started smoking. I don't know what it was, but that's what I saw." His voice was hard and his eyes never left Sam's. "And as far as I'm concerned that's an act of terrorism. Do you understand me?"

Sam nodded once, a confirmation. "This is what they want, you know? Us working against each other."

"Who's them?"

"The people who want me and Dean gone."

"The gang on the edge of town? The ones you say started the riot even though you were the only non resident there?"

"Yes." Sam learned back and blotted his nose. "And how did they manage to do that?"

Sam remained silent, and Hawkins smiled dangerously.

"That's what I thought."

Sam looked up through his hair, uncowed. "You don't understand what you're dealing with here."

"A gang you used to be a part of?" Hawkins countered harshly. "Please."

It was the best they could figure from what little Dean had told Jake. What had been done to Castiel was personal. But there was one thing still bothering Jake. The Rangers had searched them, and there had been a few odd things in their possession but nothing explosive. And there had been no shrapnel.

"What did you throw into the crowd?" he asked into the tense silence. Sam didn't even try to dodge the question. His stare said he knew damn well what Jake was angling at.

"What did you see?"

Jake didn't answer, an uneasy feeling forming in his gut, and Eric asked, "Why does that matter?"

"Level with us, son," said Dad stepped up, his voice low and serious. "You want us to not work against each other, you tell us the truth about what happened out there otherwise you're just wasting our time."

Sam looked at each of them, measuring. Whatever he was searching for, Jake didn't think he found it. He hesitated, then said, "I'm warning you now that this will be hard to believe.

"Tell us anyway."

Sam paused, gaze finding Dad. "Demons," he said.

"Excuse me?"

"Demons." Sam repeated, focus back on Hawkins. "Not people."

"Demons?" Jake pushed himself up from his lean, surprised because of all the possible explanations, was he seriously going to blame this on demons? It wasn't the first time someone had brought up God's wrath and the coming of the Rapture, but Daniel Judd was thankfully the only nutcase who who'd come out and said it. The people who actually believed him and in Oliver's aliens were thankfully few. Most recognized that the very real problems they had wouldn't be solved by prayer alone.

Neither Sam nor Dean came across as nutcases. Except for the mess Dean had made in Castiel's room, Jake thought suddenly. They believed it. Through and through.

Dad had enough. Forgetting Hawkins's rules, he took two steps and towered over Sam in his chair, furious. "Son, I don't know what you're playing at -"

Sam stood, all six and a half feet of him, chair skittering back and toppling on the carpet, and said, "I'm not playing." Dad held his ground. "That girl was possessed by a demon. I didn't throw anything into that crowd but I did knock everyone over. I know you don't believe me -"

"You're damn right we don't!"

"- so I'll show you." Then he raised his hand and spread his fingers wide; Dad stumbled backwards.

"Explain that," Sam challenged them all. "I didn't throw anything; it was me. And that smoke you saw from the girl? That was me sending the demon possessing her back to Hell."

He had their attention, every single one of them. Both Jake and Eric had frozen, not sure whether to risk moving or not, and Hawkins's careful cool was gone, replaced by his grip on the gun tucking into his waistband. Sam's nose started bleeding again, and he took a careful step back, eyes on Hawkins as he wiped at it with his sleeve. "Sorry," he said, looking from one to the other, the intensity fading into a plea. "But I need you on my side for this, or your town's going to get taken over. And you really don't want that, trust me."

"Son - "

"Sam."

"Sam." Dad was staring at his hand. All of them seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for him to make it easy on them. Tell Sam he was crazy. That they hadn't seen, again, whatever . . . that was. All Jake could think about was the girl with her rock and what Dean had said: _Creepy as fuck. Pure evil. Looking at you like he wants to eat you alive._

That's what Jake had seen on that girl's face when she'd come charging at him. And after it was over she'd just been a scared kid.

"This is a lot to swallow," Dad said finally.

"If I told you a month ago that someone would nuke the U.S., would you have believed me?"

Dad hesitated. "More than this."

Sam nodded. "Then don't believe me. Just let me and my brother go. Let us do our thing and pretend none of this happened."

"And those men outside of town? I can't just pretend them away. I've got one murdered boy and I can't let that happen again."

"Then let us go and take care of it." Sam's fingers rubbed against his jeans. "Please."

At the movement Dad looked down, staring at those fingers while the rest of them waited for his decision. He didn't say yes, but after another moment that stretched to the breaking, he gestured for Sam to precede him out the door.


	5. Part IV

_Gallantly will I show the world that I am a specially selected and well trained Soldier. My courtesy to superior officers, neatness of dress, and care of equipment shall set the example for others to follow.  
\--- Ranger's Creed_

* * *

When the door finally opened again Dean was on his millionth circuit of the room. He couldn't keep still and all that was running through his head was that he had left Castiel on his own at the hospital followed in the loop by Sam now under arrest with Ruby in this trigger happy town. It wasn't quite jumping frying pans to hell fire but he still didn't expect the troupe of people who came in. Mayor Green, Jake, Sam, Ruby, and two men that he hadn't met yet who were introduced as Eric Green and Robert Hawkins.

Sam had that resolute _I did something and I'm not sorry_ look on his face that dared Dean to make something of it. From the curiosity and wariness directed at him, he could guess what that something was. Ruby didn't look happy about it either, but the others weren't paying attention to her so Dean figured they didn't know about her yet.

Even though there was a table in the center of the room, everyone stood, the Mayor and his people on one side, Dean and his on the other. It was a multifaceted staring contest much like it had been back at the Med Center only this time he wasn't as sure of what should be looking for. Dean kept still, waiting.

Finally the Mayor cleared his throat. "I don't know what's going on here but I know I saw today a few things I can't explain. Sam here told us it was demons." He threw the word out there like it was normal, looking at Dean and Ruby as if he expected them to be shocked or laugh or something. Neither of them did.

"Looks that way," said Dean.

"You expect me to believe in demons." The Mayor took a half step forward, searching for the lies, same song, second verse.

Too bad for him Dean didn't have any for him. "You can believe what you want as long as you let us go take care of this."

"And can you . . ." The Mayor wiggled his fingers as if that was supposed to mean something.

"Play piano?"

"He means move stuff like me," said Sam, arms wrapped close, hugging himself as he watched the Mayor carefully through the bangs that had fallen forward. Bitch needed a hair band.

"No. No freak demon powers for me," said Dean, his attention caught by the area around Sam's nose that had a smear of blood that he'd missed. His cuff was wet with fresh, and Dean frowned. Usually the nose bleeds had stopped by now. He turned back to the Mayor into a silence that was suddenly ratcheted up from cautious to fraught. "What?"

"I, uh," Sam straightened a bit from his slouch, "didn't tell them about the demon part."

Ruby rolled her eyes, disdainful, but remained silent. She was closest to the door and right now considered the least threat.

"Pretty important detail to leave out, don't you think?" asked Jake sharply.

"Look, it doesn't matter," Dean cut in before it got ugly. "He didn't exactly have a choice about it, and it's irrelevant to the fact that there a bunch of demons on your doorstep wanting both us and something from your town."

"How do you figure that?" asked Hawkins.

"Because that kid you think I murdered was possessed when, and he was killed after I freed him. That wasn't us bringing trouble with us. That was trouble already here."

"What do they want?" asked Eric, arms crossed in a mirror of Sam. "Besides _you_."

Ruby yanked a chair out from the table, the noise abruptly loud.

"We don't know," said Sam as she sat herself down.

But Dean hadn't been completely useless while they were out getting arrested. "There's a salt mine here," he said, and that got both of their attention.

Sam straightened and after a beat said, "Geological formation…" going through the motions.

"God's not above cheating." And how likely was it that they'd stumbled here by accident?

"Why is the mine important?" Jake interrupted, looking between them. The men of the town had gone from just tense to tense and confused and impatient.

"Salt's a pure substance," Sam explained. "A powerful one. So powerful that demons can't cross an unbroken line of it." Dean nodded when Jake's head jerked up.

"If there's a mine and demons are sniffing around, there's a good chance that what they want is hidden in there."

"We just have to figure out what."

"And how they plan to get in there."

"You said they possess people," said Hawkins. "Why don't they just do that to someone in town and walk in?"

"They can't cross the salt," said Ruby as if he were stupid. "We're not talking a line across a door that can block them from entering a room. The very ground is sanctified just by its presence, and if God's side did hide something there? You can bet that they had it done properly, too. Those demons won't be able to just walk in."

"Wait, now you're bringing God into it?" Eric shifted uncomfortably, looking from Ruby to Sam then Dean.

"Yeah. I wasn't much of a believer at first either," said Dean. "And he's kind of a bastard. But Heaven, Hell, angels, demons, all of it's real. All of it's right here. And that mine is at the center of this, I'm sure of it."

"I'm sorry, I just can't buy that." Eric's hands dropped and landed on the back of the chair in front of him, fingers digging in. "This is crazy. I know I'm not the best Christian but this is too much. You're part of some weird cult -"

"Eric -"

"And this is all just some sick con game you're playing for . . . I don't even know why."

"Eric," said the Mayor again. "You saw - "

"Yes. I know. But telekinetics is one thing. They're talking about Heaven and Hell!"

Dean's jaw clenched, feeling flames and the knife against his skin for half a second. Sam looked over at Ruby who shook her head, and for once she and Dean were in agreement. They didn't need to make this worse by proving they were right and scaring the crap out of these people who were still the only ones with guns in here.

The Mayor looked about half a second from locking them up again as it was. Jake and the other guy were harder to read.

"Okay, let's look at the facts. Forget everything else for right now," said Hawkins. "Fact: Someone killed that boy you helped. For now let's assume it wasn't you. Fact: there's a gang outside of town that wants us to turn you over or else. You think they're after something buried in the mine. You want us to 'let you go take care of it.' What exactly does that mean?"

"We stop them."

"How?"

Sam took a deep breath. "We find out what's in the mine that they want. Look through the library. Look through the Bible - and I hope you have something other the King James lying around."

"I'll talk to Cas when he wakes up." Dean didn't know if he'd know anything. Sometimes Cas was a wealth of information, sometimes he only knew what his superiors told him and he was shit out of superiors lately. "Then we figure out what we need to do and do it."

"That's your game plan?" asked the Mayor, when neither Dean nor Sam added anything else. He didn't seem too confident in their plan, which, yeah, Dean didn't blame him. Still, it was a method that yielded results most of the time and was pretty much all they had.

"Can't do more till we know more."

"And the riot?" asked Jake. "Why did they start that?"

Sam shrugged. "Could be a reason. Could have been just to make trouble." He didn't look at Ruby. "They're demons, and most of them are evil for evil's sake."

Eric still wasn't happy about any of this, but the other three were thinking too hard for them to being thinking about locking them up and throwing away the key. Finally, the Mayor looked at his own people. "Jake, Mr. Hawkins, do you mind escorting them around town while they look into this?"

"Sure, Mayor," said Hawkins with a nod echoed by Jake.

"I don't know what to believe here," said the Mayor to them. "But I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt for now. Consider yourselves on a very short leash."

* * *

They ended up splitting up. The remains of the library were at the high school where Sam had only started digging around when the riot broke out, and that was somewhere Dean didn't want to be.

"I need to check on Cas." The idea of searching through a library that consisted of unorganized stacks of books on the floor was enough to make his eyes glaze over just thinking about it. "I'll check out the mine afterwards." Jake agreed to go with him while Hawkins went with Sam and Ruby.

"So." Jake walked quickly, staring straight ahead. "You really believe in all this? Demons and stuff?"

"My whole life," said Dean, looking at him sideways. His answer threw Jake off, like he had thought that this was Sam's thing that Dean just bought into because he was his brother.

"Oh."

"We're hunters." There was no point in hiding it now. "Before all this, we went wherever weird stuff was killing people and stopped it."

"What kind of weird stuff?"

"Ghosts, curses, witches, creatures that only get talked about it legends and folklore. Stupid idiots playing with things they didn't understand." He leveled a look at Jake. "It's all real."

Jake chewed that over, and when he asked his next question he nodded toward the horizon. "And this? The bombs. That happen because of something like that?"

Dean and Sam had been holed up and putting each other back together after the Devil's Gate when the bombs fell, the day after Ruby had dragged herself and Castiel out of Hell. "I don't know." He didn't know which was worse, if demons had infiltrated the government to do it or that it was people who had done this to them all on their own.

He didn't want to think about it. "What about you? This isn't your first time dealing with this kind of stuff." They were almost at the firehouse where Jericho's citizens were still trying to turn themselves into an army. Jake followed his line of sight and sighed.

"No," was all he said, and when he turned back to Dean the warning was clear. Dean let it go, and they continued in silence past the firehouse to the Med Center.

Castiel was awake when they returned, sitting up in his bed. The halls outside were still cluttered with the injured from the riot but shutting the door blocked all that out. Cas looked at Jake curiously, and Dean said to the point, "Salt mine. Know anything about it?"

The angel's turned blandly toward him, a crease forming between his brows. "No. Why are you asking about salt mines?"

"Cause there's one in town."

Behind him, Jake had stopped just inside the doorway staring at the Devil's trap Dean had drawn on the ceiling. "More superstition?" he asked with a hint of humor underneath that made Dean grin at him.

"Whatever works."

A hiss from Castiel didn't let him linger, however. His eyes were clamped shut in pain, fists clenched in the blanket.

"Cas?" Dean touched his arm, and Castiel flinched. He vaguely heard Jake leaving the room for help. "Cas, what is it?" But he knew. The bandage around the brand was bloodied in a red print of its shape, the stains slowly spreading into one another

"It's weakening," Castiel gasped.

"I need more than that! What do I do?" Dean was already unwrapping the bandage, layer on layer of gauze peeled away until the brand was exposed, oozing blood at the edges of the burn.

"Dean? Castiel?" Doc April came rushing in, stethoscope in hand. "What's wrong?"

Dean ignored her. "Cas, what do I do?" Sam had done the magic to stop it last time and he wasn't there right then to fix this. It wasn't the ritual so much as the power, and right now Dean had neither.

"Nothing." The rigidity in his muscles eased off, spasmed, and then he let out a soft sigh. "There's nothing to do, Dean." He opened his eyes and pinned Dean with a look of quiet resignation. "Ruby should not have saved me."

"Yes, she should have." Dean's grip tightened on his good arm. "Don't talk like that."

"It's only a matter of time." The corner of his mouth twitched in what Dean had learned was his version of a smile. "I don't have eternity." His eyes slipped closed again and his hands went slack as he fell into unconsciousness.

"Damn it, Cas."

"Dean?" Doc April was watching him worriedly. She hadn't touched Castiel yet because he was in her way. "Let me wrap that up." Dean allowed himself to be prodded back and was surprised when Jake touched his shoulder, worried and confused.

"What's wrong?" he asked, but Dean shook his head. He wasn't about to try to explain. He shrugged off Jake's hand on his shoulder and went to check the lines, sweeping from one corner of the room to the next. It didn't take to long, and all of them were fine, leaving him at loose ends while April finished up. Jake's eyes on him were making him uncomfortable, too. He hadn't said anything further but Dean could see the questions on his face, even when he turned away to go get more antiseptic cream for April.

"You're bleeding," said Dean when he came back. On the back of his head. Clotted now, but still a gaping cut with loose skin that was partially hidden by butterfly bandages and the hair that hadn't been scraped away.

"It's fine." Jake handed off the gauze to April with a wary eye on Dean. The suture kit Dean had been using earlier was still on the visitor's chair, and he grabbed both it and Jake and shoved him into the seat. It gave his hands something to do.

He ignored April and the smile hovering about her lips as Jake protested that he didn't need his head stitched up. "You're stuck babysitting me anyway." Dean cleaned the gash with the last alcohol swipe, ignoring Jake's hiss, and threaded the curved needle. It took him a minute to fumble his lighter free to sterilize it.

Dean had no more tricks up his sleeve. He had Sam and Ruby, and as resources went for curing angels, they were flying just as blind. Even Ruby hadn't had much to offer besides some vague description of the ritual that had been used and pithy remarks about it being above her pay grade, and okay, _Dean_ had been above her pay grade and he hadn't the first clue what exactly they'd done either or how to fix it. He didn't know if there was a way to fix it.

Jake's head he could fix. It took four tight stitches in a neat row to pull the damaged skin back together. Doc April left at one point to go get more gauze to clean up with. Jake suffered through it silently once he'd given in, and when Dean was done said, "Thank you," quietly. He stood up, fingers searching out the edges of the wound. Dean didn't stop him even though it would be better if he didn't poke at it.

Castiel's breathing evened out as he slipped from unconsciousness to sleep.  
Dean absently ran his eye over the lines and traps one more time and tried to put his thoughts into more coherent order. "We need to check out the mine."

Jake was watching him with too much sympathy but he wisely didn't say anything. Instead, he flickered a glance at the window. "It's getting late," he said. "We'll have to hurry to catch Gray. He owns the mine and has a guard on it."

"That guy who thinks we're gonna murder everyone in their sleep?" The sky was turning rosy and red around the edges. All that dust in the atmosphere had given them an unending supply of beautiful sunsets. Dean thought it always looked like the sun was bleeding.

Jake smoothed his hair down over his wound. "He's got his reasons for not trusting strangers. I don't agree with all of it, but I can't blame him." He nodded out the window. "He was out on the roads for a while. You see any other towns out there?"

"Almost everyone on the road from Denver is dead. Most places were ghost towns." Sometimes literally. They had put more than one lost soul to rest on the way. People dying a slow death from the radiation or, further out, starving or killed in the panic that followed. The roads had been littered with bodies. By the time, they'd passed through most of the looting had already happened and the looters had moved as far away from the dead zone as they could.

It was another thing Dean didn't like thinking about. He'd seen a lot of death, both above ground and below but there was something worse about the numbers gone in Colorado. The empty cars, the houses with broken windows, the city that plain wasn't there anymore. It was just as bad as when it was up close and personal because it wasn't just a tragedy on the news. It was everyone. People they'd fought to protect. Some people they probably saved at some point. All of them wiped out or left to rot.

"Yeah," Jake quietly agreed. "Me and Eric were in Rogue River a week ago. It's a small city and the Red Cross evacuated the people who survived, but when we went through it looked like a war zone." He said it like he'd seen a few.

"No one was there?"

"Kinchy, half out of his mind, and a mercenary company. They killed everyone in the hospital the first time they came through because they wouldn't give up their supplies. Wasn't demons."

The door was empty but its shadow seemed longer. "People, man," Dean said softly. "People I don't get."

Jake half smiled. "People are easy. They're just a lot worse than we want them to be."

And just as likely to surprise you the other way. Dean had met a lot of people and most of the time they turned out to be stronger, braver, resilient in the face of the impossible. Folks who loved their families, people worth fighting for. But he wasn't going to argue; cynical or not, Jake was the one with the citizen army.

Cas was out and probably would be for a while. "Salt mine," Dean said.

"Salt mine," Jake agreed, turning.

They had to go back to the firehouse for a truck to get out there. The citizen army was packing up for the day, hurrying to get home before dark. Jake led them inside the garage and into the large meeting room on the first floor. The fire engines had been cleared out and replaced by two pickups that could have been as old as the Impala but actually showed their age. The paint was flaking and both of their bumpers had more than a few dings in them.

The conference room had been turned into a classroom. One of the white boards was covered in a checklist of items to look out for in the field, another had the roles and responsibilities of each member of the platoon listed along with a breakdown into smaller patrol and checkpoint units. On the far wall, a map of the area was tacked up with a big circle marked around what had to be the town and pushpins spaced around the perimeter. It was quite the set up for an ad hoc army, and Dean was impressed. He recognized a bunch of the big ideas from what Dad had taught him and Sam, and it was a little weird to see it written out in big block letters. Their lessons had been rote memorization and practical application from the start, adapted to hunting, of course. Nothing about it had been as formal as this.

It was not quite twilight, the sun still high enough to cast the room in a warm glow. They probably wouldn't reach the mine until dark if it was far enough that they needed a truck to get there. Everyone but the two older men who were in charge was gone, and Jake went over to talk with them just outside the door of the office that was in back. They had a map spread out on a nearby table and it sounded like they were discussing extra patrol routes. Jake had the truck keys in his hand but he was listening closely, and it took a second for Dean to realize that he wasn't there as a representative of the Mayor's office getting filled in.

"What if we assign Squad Five to the school? It's pretty quiet now with most people licking their wounds. They should be able to handle that." Jake was the third leg of the triumvirate. It was kind of funny because Dean wouldn't have pegged him for it. Jake knew what he was doing, that much was clear from their first meet, but if Dean had to pick an odd man out for working for the establishment, it would have been him for the way he always stood in background, slightly worn around the edges.

The conversation wound down and soon Jake was coming back over to collect Dean on the way out. "Sorry about that," he said, looking at the darkening sky where the sun was starting to disappear below the horizon.

Darkness never stopped Dean and Sam. In fact, they more often than not waited for the cover night brought them. "I need my weapons back," said Dean. He wasn't going into a mine without a shotgun when he was specifically looking for trouble, even if the demons couldn't enter.

Jake lifted up the edge of his jacket to reveal a handgun. "And I know you have that knife on you."

"Does your gun shoot salt?" Dean asked. "Because I guarantee we run into something nasty, those bullets might not be much good." Maybe a bit of an exaggeration but the point was Dean didn't _know _ what they were up against.

"Salt," Jake repeated, raising his eyebrows at Dean.

"Yes. Just trust me on this one." Dean suddenly wished Sam were going with him. No matter how mad he was at him, it would be better than going in with an amateur who didn't know the first thing about looking into the shadows. "Look, do you still have our weapons you confiscated?"

"Yeah." Jake glanced past him at the door, then sighed and jerked his head for Dean to follow him further back to a storeroom. The door was locked but Jake had the key and let them both in. It was a makeshift gun cabinet although there was more ammunition than guns present. Dean's were piled on the end of the central counter where two fire extinguishers lay on their sides, forgotten.

They were good to see, and Dean ran his hands over them, feeling the cool wood and metal of the sawed off, the textured grip of Sam's Taurus. In deference to the setting sun, Dean limited himself to checking and loading the shotguns and tucking his own Colt into the back of his pants. "Here." He handed Jake Sam's bandolier of salt shells, slinging his own over his shoulder. As he pulled it snug, he remembered the other things he had in his inner pocket and fished one out. "And put this on."

Jake stared at the talisman a second before reluctantly taking it. "What is it?"

"Protection from possession," said Dean.

Jake fingered it slowly, skeptical but in the end he put it on. "For the record, I still think all this is crazy."

Dean grabbed up his guns, their weight comforting and familiar, and followed Jake out to the truck. "For the record, the bad guys don't care."

* * *

They caught up with Gray Anderson, the mine owner, in his offices in the eastern commercial district. Earlier, Jake explained, there'd been some vandalism on the side of a nearby building, a few broken windows that had caused a fuss that morning. No one was hurt and it wasn't anything like what had happened at the high school. "The neighborhoods been getting restless though," said Jake as they parked.

Blocky, two story office buildings alternated with large driveways that led to loading docks. The back of a strip mall was across the street and two blocks south the concrete of 70's construction gave way to a low rent neighborhood. "He's been keeping an eye on his property, once he heard." He smiled suddenly at Dean. "Which is great because it keeps him out City Hall and everyone's hair.

"So he wasn't supposed to be there this morning?"

"Dad about took his head off, but he refused to leave it alone."

From what he'd seen earlier it didn't surprise Dean that much. Some people just had an opinion on everything - Sam came to mind - and had to have a say in everything that went on, their business or not.

Anderson was meeting with two other leather beaten men, miners, Dean guessed, both of whom looked him over as he and Jake approached. They'd left the guns and ammo in the truck but that didn't stop the suspicion directed their way.

"Jake." Anderson didn't take his eyes off Dean who stared back at the jerk. "What's going on?"

Jake took it all in stride, stepping slightly so Dean was behind his shoulder. "Gray. I need to go take a look at the mine."

Anderson's sharp gaze turned on Jake. "What for?"

"A road gang that's been making noise we think might be interested in it. Dean's run into them before and he thinks the mine's a target."

Anderson's lips thinned. "Really." He gave Dean a long, disbelieving look then didn't even bother being polite when he said dismissed his guys and said to Dean, "If you'll excuse us?"

Dean rolled his eyes and followed the other two out, ignoring their unfriendly jostling. He didn't wander far.

"Jake, are you crazy?" he heard through the glass. "They just happen to be interested in the mine when there just happens to be people in town who 'know' what they're interested in."

Jake's voice was softer, almost indistinguishable. "We need to check it out."

"I've got my own men guarding it. No one's going to get through. And that man does not need to go near it."

"These aren't sane people we're dealing with. Dean knows how they operate, where they're likely to strike. It'll save us time -"

"I don't care. He's a murderer!"

Fuck it. Dean shoved away from the building. He didn't need to listen to some clueless idiot malign his character. He put up with a hell of a lot for this gig and he was too damn tired and hungry to deal with it today. Jake would either get them permission or not, and if not, well, Dean would slip off anyway.

He headed for the strip mall, walking the block around to the front to see if there was anything useful left in the stores. There were four shops, a hairdresser, and a laundromat. The laundromat had a busted window and detergent all over the floor, well scavenged. Some of the machines looked like they might work and others had cracked face panes. _Shining Nails_ was more or less intact and when Dean wandered through he saw that most of the chemicals and sharp scissors had been left alone. The nail polish rack was a wreck and there was a cat sleeping in one of the salon chairs. It yawned when it saw Dean and purred when he gave it a scratch behind the ears.

Next door was a mom and pop hardware store with boarded up windows and voices coming from inside. Still in business apparently. "Hello?" He knocked on the side of the door-shaped panel. The voices silenced and a moment later a slot he hadn't noticed earlier opened with two eyes peeking out.

"Yes?" The voice was gruff.

Dean put on his charming smile. The drug store where he'd found chalk and salt earlier hadn't been boarded up but the people had been just as cagey. "Hi. My name's Dean. You're a hardware store right?"

"That's right." The eyes didn't blink.

"You don't happen to have any iron stakes, do you?" He figured it wouldn't hurt to ask, going up against demons and all. The eyes frowned this time and a moment later disappeared, replaced by a creak as the door opened. The owner, presumably the Herman from the sign, was about seventy and he held his shotgun like he knew how to use it. He didn't invite Dean in right away, instead asking shrewdly, "You got a gun?"

He reminded Dean a bit of Bobby and he quickly blinked the thought away. "Got a knife." He pulled open his coat and moved so Herman could see that the knife was all he had.

"I might have what you're looking for," said Herman after giving him a once over and jerking his head for Dean to follow him in. "You got anything to trade?"

"No, not really," said Dean. He hoped Jake didn't come looking for him.

Except for the lack of interior lighting, the store looked like any other hardware store Dean had been in before. It was remarkably intact, thanks to Herman and his precautions no doubt. The shelves were still fairly well stocked with bit odds and ends though the batteries were all gone. The tool aisle was a little lighter, too, but there was plenty of fencing and lighting accessories, tubing and garden supplies. Those would almost certainly be snapped up come spring.

Herman led him around to the mailboxes section where there were indeed iron stakes ready to hold up house numbers. Dean hefted one. It was a little thin but sturdy enough. Two sets of eyes were watching him. Over Herman's shoulder, a young woman had ventured down the aisle. Brown hair, shortish, cute, but what grabbed Dean's attention was the fan belt in her hand and the oil on her fingers.

"What are you going to do with that?" she asked when she saw him looking. Herman startled, shotgun slipping in his grip and inch.

"Thought it'd make a good walking stick," Dean said the first thing that popped into his head.

"Little short for that, isn't it?" The woman wandered closer, not put off at all by Dean or Herman's subsequent grumpiness.

Dean shrugged. "It may come in handy." He set the iron rod down. "I wasn't lying when I said I don't have much to trade," he said to ease Herman's worry. Another time, Dean may have hit on her, but now, he couldn't believe himself, it was just too much effort to even think about. "I've got some herbs you could maybe use for tea and some ammunition. Wouldn't be able to give you much though."

"Hmm." Herman eyed him like he had at the door, frank and assessing. "Shotgun shells?"

"A few, yes sir." Dean nodded. Herman's gun was an older Remington, well taken care of. "I can pack them too if you have supplies."

"Hmm." It sounded like he had gravel caught in his throat. "Let me think about it. What are you really going to use it for?"

The truth was a bit nebulous in Dean's head. Trap a demon, make a circle, use it as a club - demons weren't the only things out there that iron could hurt. But what he said was, "I mostly just wanted to see inside your shop while I waited on someone," with a sheepish grin. It was enough to earn him an honest harrumph from Herman, but the man didn't seem too put out by it, thankfully. The shotgun stayed loose in his hand.

The woman grinned. "And your best excuse was an iron stake?"

"Well, how was I to know there were fan belts in here?" And okay, it wasn't that much effort.

She looked at the strap in her hand. "None the right size," she sighed.

"I'm sorry, Heather." Herman's whole face wrinkled sadly. "It's a special order part for a vehicle that old."

"Oh, I know!" Heather hastened to reassure him. "I just thought I'd give it a shot anyway. See if luck was with me."

"What are you fixing up?" asked Dean.

"A '62 Ford pickup. Mr. Keynes had one stashed in his barn and asked me to take a look when he saw me showing the kids Charlotte." She stopped abruptly, but her smile was affectionate when she added, "My truck."

For a second Dean couldn't breathe. His baby was probably covered in rust by now, the thought crossed his mind before he could stop it. He blinked and smiled faintly.

"Are you okay?" Heather's embarrassment faded as abruptly as it had come.

"Yeah," said Dean, waving off both her and Herman who now peered at him like a crazy man in the dim light. "Sorry. Just . . ."

"Yeah, no, it's all right," said Heather quickly. "Dusty. No offense, Herman."

"Long as it's not breezy. You interested in anything else?"

"Uh, no, I'm good, I think." Dean shook off his momentary lapse. It was nothing, really. "I gotta get back."

Herman reached over and pulled a couple rods from the rack. "Might as well take these."

Dean accepted them, eyebrows rising in surprise. "Really? I don't want to -"

"It's no trouble." Herman's gaze cut right through him, soft and knowing, and Dean felt flayed open, all his grief open in that one moment. Herman patted his hand and pretended it was nothing. "I doubt I'd be able to get much for them with the railroad there for the picking."

The iron was cool to the touch and smooth. Dean had to swallow twice. "Thank you."

Herman harrumphed again. "It's not an easy world any more."

"We've been lucky," said Heather softly as the three of them returned down the aisle to the main part of the store.

"Nothing but vandals," Herman agreed, his voice lacking irony, and Dean was suddenly fiercely glad that they had been spared the worst of the destruction. That here, they had been protected from the despair. That murder was still a crime.

He said a hasty goodbye, still feeling unexpectedly raw, and hurried back outside. Even the fading light was bright and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.

Heather caught up with him when he was in front of the hairdresser. "Hey. I just wanted to say, I'm sorry. I didn't mean -"

"It's okay."

"No." They had stopped walking, and she twisted her hands together, smearing the oil without noticing. "I mean. I'm sorry for whoever you lost. I'm not from here originally and I don't know what happened to a lot of my family, and I just wanted to say I was sorry, and wow, this sounded a lot better in my head." She laughed nervously, ducking her head.

Dean was unexpectedly touched, and said when she looked up, "Thank you." She smiled back and there was something there, not flirty, but one human to another sharing a grief that neither one of them could hold on their own. He wasn't going to tell her he was grieving for a car, but he felt warmed by it nonetheless. As the moment stretched into awkward territory, Dean couldn't find anything to else to say except, "So Charlotte, huh?"

Heather laughed, easier now. "Yeah. Don't make fun."

"It's a pretty name." He'd never named the Impala, she'd worn her model like a title, and responded best when he whispered "baby" in her ear.

They started walking again, side by side. "Yeah, from _Charlotte's Web_. My first truck. She hasn't died on me yet."

"You were showing your kids how to fix her up?"

"Third graders, yeah. I teach," she explained. "The high school's closed but we still take the grade schoolers for a couple hours a day. The routine's good for them, even if the curriculum's gone out the window."

Dean could imagine twenty kids gathered around Heather's old truck. Wondered what it would be like to grow up in this new world of theirs, thought of all the ones who wouldn't. Heather was right: they were lucky here. Blessedly lucky.

The sun was half gone over the horizon. Dean wondered if they'd be able to go to the mine after all. Heather said goodbye when they got to the corner where he was going around back and she was going forward.

"Good luck with your truck."

"Thanks. Take care of yourself."

Jake was standing in the street behind, looking worried until he saw Dean come around the second corner. His radio was in his hand and he let out a breath but only said, "I convinced Gray. It'll have to wait though. I got a call about shots fired in the Southend, and I'm closest."

The iron rods came in handy when he and Jake arrived to find that the mailbox target practice had escalated to an all out brawl. Five men, all drunk, were in various states of belligerence with a handful of older men in trucker hats and plenty of experience. The truck headlights were enough to make everyone stop for a second until one went out with the tinkle of broken glass from a bullet. Turned out that there was one man who was still a mean shot when liquored up.

The good news was he was out of bullets. Dean couldn't hear it click in from the distance he was at, but the man twisted the pistol to look at it before tossing it away in disgust, following it with his beer bottle that shattered on the pavement.

It was over after that. Dean watched from the hood of the truck, looking suitably menacing, as Jake waded in. "Go home," he said, over and over again. "Sleep it off." Wives and kids started to come out now that the danger had passed. A pair of boys reenacting the scene with relish while their mom dragged their drunk dad inside. There was a small cluster of angry folks gathered around a set of four mailboxes in a row. One of them gestured wildly and his neighbor kept reeling him in.

Dean kept looking but he couldn't tell if this was demons or just plain human stupidity. He didn't get long to ponder it. A flare split the sky in two, westward, and Jake, shouting into his radio that only spit back static, scrambled for the truck. Dean didn't waste time asking questions.

* * *

The western checkpoint was obliterated when they got there. The vehicles that had served as a barrier had been plowed aside and were riddled with bullet holes. There weren't any bodies, two men came out to meet them when they pulled up.

"What happened?" Jake left the engine running and jumped out. Dean followed, shotgun in hand. The two men were in their fifties and both wore beards and flannel under their coats.

"Three trucks. Rammed us," said the taller of the two. "Ira says it was those same hooligans that showed up this morning."

"Blew right through us. Didn't slow down at all. They fixed a guard to their hoods and once the first was through, we just got out of the way."

"Did you radio in?"

"All we got was static, so we sent up the flare. Sent Josh off to run warn as many folks as we can, but I don't know how much good that'll do."

"He'll save time if he cuts the creek. He can take a half mile off on the way to the Shermans'."

Dean didn't know how far the Shermans were, but he seriously doubted Josh would get there in time, and Jake and the two men knew it too. "The men on watch?" Jake nodded past the checkpoint to the scrub woods beyond the perimeter.

"They haven't shown up. Radio's out so - "

"Try it again," said Dean.

"It's out. Nothing but static."

"Just try it," said Dean impatiently. They were wasting time here already.

The radio worked. Both of the guards looked at him in surprise while Jake grabbed it and started calling for help, quizzing the other two as he relayed information back.

Less than five minutes later, he and Dean were back in the truck roaring toward the Sherman farm. The lights were on at the house when they got there, and one black monster truck was stopped in its tracks in front of the porch with two flat tires.

A crack shot put out one of their headlights as they pulled in. "Don't shoot!" Jake yelled through his open window.

"Who's there!"

Josh had made it in time, but only just, and had already gone to the next farm over. Between him and Mr. Sherman, they'd taken out the truck and chased off the two men who'd gotten away in the dark. Mr. Sherman was pissed off and kept yelling after them even as they slammed the doors shut and took off again.

Jake thumped the steering wheel hard with the heel of his hand. "We're too late. They were lucky here but no one else will have warning."

"And you have no idea where they'll head next?"

"There's eight farms out here. We've gotten complaints from most of them."

"Well which one hasn't been hit?"

He took a moment, thumbs tapping on the wheel. "The Hanson's, I think. Maybe the Fells, too."

"Hanson. . . " Where had Dean heard that before?

Jake didn't look at him. "Brandon Hanson's parents' farm."

The kid who'd been possessed and so far outside of Jericho that Sam had found him when he was scouting. "That's where he'll be."

"What? You don't know that. There were three trucks."

"They're a diversion," said Dean. "The demon will be at the Hanson's."

Jake took a ninety degree turn at fifty, and they were up on two wheels, Dean grabbing hold of the dash as he went sliding along the seat.

"There's two other farms closer to the border."

"Look, I know that it's a lot to ask you to trust me, man, but I know demons," said Dean. "They didn't hit the Hanson's because they were using them and with that demon back in Hell - or dead - it's not just fair game, it's punishment." Jake tore his eyes off the road to fix him with a hard stare.

"You sure about this?"

"As sure as I can be."

The sun had set, and while full dark hadn't closed in on them it would in less than half an hour. Jake drove in the center of the two lane highway, pushing their clunky but hardworking truck to sixty five. The engine rattled just a hair shy of falling out, and Jake kept it there, never crossing that final line into a stall.

"You said you'd been doing this your whole life," Jake said suddenly, leaving the question hanging though Dean wasn't quite sure what he was asking.

"Yeah?"

"How - why - how long is that?" The road was rough and they bounced over the potholes.

Now wasn't the time. Dean never talked about this. No one really asked. Anyone who would already knew and those he was willing to tell had lost someone just as badly. Still, Dean wet his lips. After another second he said, "Since I was a kid."

Jake took another turn, and Dean felt his pity and ignored it. Thankfully, headlights from town distracted them both from the awkward conversation. Dean cranked down the window, gun barrel on the sill, ready for trouble, but it looked like there were more people sitting in the back, all armed and none of them aimed at them. "Reinforcements."

They paused for long enough for four men to hop in the back of their truck before moving on. Jake sent the others to check on the farms they'd passed by to make sure they were ok and not demon fodder. The Hanson's, Jake told him, were just round the next cornfield.

They heard the commotion before they could see the farmhouse and then rounded the bend where up ahead there were two trucks blocking off the road from the little cluster of buildings well off the main highway. It was hard to see in the gloom except for the flashes of gun powder, but what Dean could see was bad.

"Pull off early," he said. Jake did immediately, cutting both the lights and the engine. The men in the bed dismounted and clustered around Jake and Dean over the hood, by the single line of trees at the side of the road. All four of them were quiet and nervous and from the way they were flinching from the noise and gripping their rifles, Dean bet they'd only learned to shoot them recently.

"Surprise is our advantage," said Jake urgently. "There's at least six of them, maybe more. Harrison, you and me will circle through the cornfield to the other side. Will and Yates, come with us and we'll split into two positions on the other side. Philip, you're with Dean. I want you behind the barn." He waited until each of them was on the same page, then outlined the count, the signals, and by all means stay behind cover. It took Dean back to when Dad used to tell him and him and Sam what the plan was before heading out, even if they knew it rote. Dean could count on one hand the number of times things went according to the plan.

"I'll take care of the ringleader," said Dean when Jake looked his way before they broke up.

Jake drew his pistol from his waistband. "We'll give you as much cover as we can," he said without hesitating, gaze sliding over all of them and ending on Philip before returning the Dean. "Take care of each other."

Philip looked about ready to throw up, but he nodded, and Dean did, too. Their route would be safest and he was going to make sure it stayed that way.

Getting into position involved sticking close to the trees for as long as they could, then running in a crouch for the barn through the long prairie grass and brush that hadn't been cleared. Philip was short and around Dean's age. He was in pretty good shape, but made too much noise that was thankfully covered by the chaos at the house. The gunfire had stopped, shifting into wild whoops of triumph and the sound of glass breaking and horses whining.

The back of the barn was a giant mass backlit against the truck brights trained on the central yard. The sun was almost down which helped when they crossed the open stretch, but didn't hide the glimpse Dean got of the mess spilling out before them. Half the gang was carting out goods from the yard and stables, piling what they couldn't take into a huge pile in the center with a case of gasoline. A couple others were leading the horses out, wild eyed and jittery, trying to get away. One kid was throwing junk at their heels just to see them whicker and flinch.

Dean saw one body on the ground. An indistinct mass in a white shirt at the foot of the porch steps. The real horror though was coming from the house. Hidden from view by the barn, they could still hear the screams, high pitched and young in harmony with desperate pleading.

There was enough junk between the barn and the house so Dean led Philip closer until they were behind a defunct and tarped tractor with a little better vantage. They clustered up behind one giant wheel, Philip's eyes clenching shut as he tried to stifle his breathing.

"Hey," Dean whispered right in his ear. "Remember the plan. Just think about what you gotta do next." Philip swallowed hard but opened his eyes and nodded. Dean clapped him silently on the shoulder then knelt to take another look around. Another scream ripped through the young night, bringing with it the memory of a thousand kinds of knives that made a scream that sweet. He had to get to the house. He was checking around the house end of the tractor when a shotgun blast exploded from the behind the stable - not Jake's revolver - and they were back in a firefight.

The looters dropped and found cover, firing at the stable, another spot by the trucks driving the horses crazy - two of them broke free and bolted - and then one of them was diving for the tractor for cover. Dean nailed him the chest, cursing, and darted back to Philip who had frozen completely. He grabbed his arm.

"I gotta get to the house." Shot pinged and ricocheted off the metal tractor. "Cover me. Two shots, duck, and reload. Repeat it back."

"Two shots . . ." The arm Dean held vibrated, but Philip wet his lips, straightening. "Two shots, duck, and reload."

"Don't forget to breathe."

Dean edged back along the tractor tugging Philip along. Then he counted down with his fingers and ran like hell. Dean leapt the steps in one go as Philip's blasts pounded over his head, hot iron on his heels, and slammed into the house. The door wasn't locked and the guy standing guard never knew what hit him. A second emerged from the kitchen and Dean didn't even hesitate. The body propped open the kitchen door. Dean went in shotgun first.

In the corner by the fridge, two kids huddled, the little one sheltered by his older sister. Their mom was laid out on the table with her clothes in as many ribbons as her skin though neither had been removed yet. The demon that had to be Monty looked up lazily and grinned widely when he recognized him.

"Dean Winchester." The woman on the table sobbed, choking on her own tears and snot.

"You sorry, son of a bitch."

"I wasn't expecting you till tomorrow."

Dean put a little swagger into his step. "Well here I am. And you can have me. Just let them go."

Monty smiled, baring his teeth. "I heard you were simple minded," he said. Throwing his hand out, he slammed Dean into the wall beside the door, knocking the wind out of him but not pinning him there. The girl stared wide eyed, her hand slipping from her little brother's eyes. Monty just grinned, licking his teeth, perverse and wrong on the face of the middle aged man he was wearing.

The gunfight was still going on outside, punctuated by pauses and shouts before taking off suddenly in a flurry of noise. The knife in Monty's hand spun around his fingers as he ignored everything but Dean. "You are going to sing for me," he said. He thought he'd won already and it was pathetic really, classic evil villain mistake, and Dean would laugh if he had a slightly better plan. Instead he took a shaky step backward toward the door, shoulder twinging, then another, this time stumbling on the body in the doorway. Monty's laughter followed him as he tumbled gracelessly to the floor. Dean twisted, managing to take most of the hit on his other shoulder, and winced when he landed hard on everything else in his pockets.

"Dean Winchester." Monty shook his finger like a disappointed teacher. "I was told you would be a formidable opponent." He twisted his thick borrowed fingers into Dean's collar, dragging him up with a biting burn where the fabric bit into Dean's neck. Over Monty's shoulder, Dean saw the two kids run to their mom and hoped they had the sense to get out the back door as quick as they could.

"No one told me you were clumsy, too."

Both his guns were on the floor somewhere, lost when he got slammed into the wall. Dean put effort into his grin. "I'm not." And he thrust Ruby's knife under the demon's arm and between his ribs. Monty's shock was highlighted by the flickering electric light show as the demon inside curdled and died.

Dean fell to the floor with a thump beside the poor bastard whose eyes were open and alive and maybe grateful for a second before they faded, dead. Letting his head thump back on the floor, Dean let out a harsh sigh, his throat burning. His whole body ached and the room smelled like blood and shit.

"Jesus." Rolling his head back, he saw Jake in the doorway, and it was only then that Dean noticed the silence outside and the muffled crying in the kitchen. Then Jake was kneeling beside him, hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?" Together they got Dean to his feet, and Jake stepped back, eyes heavy on his back as Dean retrieved the knife.

"I'm good." The words were rough on his throat but Jake didn't push like Sam would have. "We gotta get the kids."

"I can -"

"No, it's fine." Dean bent again and grabbed the leg of the man he'd killed to pull him out of the way when Jake caught on and grabbed his arms. Helping people had never been the problem. It was all the muddy stuff and unlucky people caught in the middle. "Everything okay out there? Philip okay?"

"Shaken up but alive," said Jake. "I sent him to stand watch on the road."

"Good." Dean grunted and grabbed the leg of the man underneath, cool and cooling. "He's not cut out this."

"Not many of them are," said Jake. "But they volunteered and he did what I asked of him." They dropped the dead man who couldn't have been older than Sam. The hole in his chest was perfectly placed. Dean couldn't imagine Philip's face if he saw this. He hoped he never did and knew that it was an empty hope. Under normal circumstance, Philip wouldn't have even been close to something like this. He wouldn't have given Dean the time of day. Under normal circumstances, the two kids in the kitchen wouldn't by crying over their mom who was trying so hard to be strong. With barely a glance between them, Jake went to the kids while Dean went around the other side of the table to check out Mrs. Hanson.

"Hey, what's your name? Are you guys hurt?" Jake put himself between them and the table. "Can you come over here so I can check you out? Dean here is going to make sure your mom's okay and we need to give him a little space." He coaxed him to the other side of the kitchen, turning them sideways, so they could still see her out of the corner of their eyes.

Dean lifted up the edges of Mrs. Hanson's shirt, leaving be the pieces that stuck. Her torso was covered with long but shallow - thank God - cuts that were meant to cause pain and not kill. Dean let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and gave Mrs. Hanson a genuine smile. She clearly expected the worst, her jaw clenched tight.

"You're going to be okay," he told her. Her fingers brushed his right hand and he turned into it, squeezing back when she crushed his bones together. "It's gonna hurt like hell, and you'll need a lot of stitches, but you'll survive this."

Mrs. Hanson started to cry, small hiccups that she didn't let grow, and Dean just held on. He could give her a minute before finding clean sheets to tear into strips. She would survive this and so would her kids. They'd lost their brother and their father, but they wouldn't lose her. Dean never forgot: family was everything, even broken, especially broken, but sometimes he forgot that it was just as deep a truth for other people too.

* * *

"Dean! Dean!"

He couldn't see Sam right away; Dean's arms were occupied with keeping Becca Hanson in as little pain as possible as he and Philip carried her into the Med Center. As soon as they got her on the gurney though, Sam was grabbing his shoulders, tugging him around.

"Are you all right? Fuck, Dean what happened?" His fingers skimmed over the fabric burns on his throat.

"Dude, get off me," Dean batted his hands away.

"What happened?" Sam repeated, still worried but holding his gigantic ass back. "When we heard the explosions, we went over but the dust was too thick and we couldn't see anything, and they said they hadn't seen you but -"

Dean grabbed at Sam's flailing wrists before they smacked him. "Wait, what are you talking about? There weren't any explosions."

Sam stilled, confused, as he pulled his arm free to point. "At the mine?"

"We weren't at the mine. What happened?"

"Where were you?"

"We saw a flare to the west just as we were leaving. That demon outside of town that wanted us was attacking a farm."

"You - "

"Yes," Dean answered impatiently. "What happened at the mine?"

Sam blinked once, switching gears, and the frantic edge subsided but didn't disappear completely. He took a deep breath. "Some people broke in, overwhelmed the guards there, and set off charges to destroy the road and some of structures. The people guarding it rallied, drove them off. That guy who owns it and the Mayor wouldn't let me go and look for you. I thought - The Mayor and Gail were going crazy. Jake was with you, right?"

"Yeah. I don't know where he went, but we were together." He'd brought the kids inside and Dean had lost track of him. The radios had been well and truly dead before they headed back, and they couldn't get a hold of anybody. Now the demons were in the mine. Fuck. "It was a diversion." Dean rubbed a hand through his hair. It was all adding up to something buried in all that salt. They'd had eight men respond to the call. The other Rangers were keeping a lid on trouble in town. "Tell me you found something."

Sam was looking worse than usual with a layer of dust covering his exhaustion, all the bullshit stripped away like it sometimes was. Not gone but absent for the moment. "Not yet. We'd barely gotten through half the books when the call came in."

Fuck. But Sam only shrugged, not quite sheepishly at Dean's annoyance and changed the subject. "You need to get looked over?"

"Just got thrown into a wall. Nothing serious. Where's Ruby?"

"With Castiel." Sam started walking down the hall toward the room. "They're adding patients to our room. They want the salt out of there."

"Screw that."

Sam brushed his hair back. "That's what I said, except politely."

"Jake!" The loud cry startled Dean. Jake, coming around the far corner with Harrison and Will, was suddenly mobbed by April's mom, who turned out to be his mom too from the slight eye roll he gave as he returned her hug, spouting reassurance and insisting he was fine.

"Not even bleeding." He saw Dean watching them and they shared a half smile, both tired and, with Sam so close that Dean could feel the heat radiating off of him, suffering the worry only family could shower on them.

He was a good guy, Jake.

The salt line was broken across the doorway and no one new had been added yet. Ruby stood when they came in, and if Dean wasn't mistaken, her shoulders relaxed at seeing him alive and whole. "I want my knife back," was what she said though.

"Not a chance," said Dean, hesitating before he brushed by her. "It came in handy . . . When we're done with all this, you'll get it back."

"You talk like you think we'll survive."

"What can I say? The glass is half full today." He smirked at her, and when she rolled her eyes, irritated, it felt just as good as Sam's worry.

Castiel was sitting up, lines of pain creasing his face. The brand had been unwrapped again but it wasn't bleeding at the moment. "How are you doing?"

"Well enough." He was a terrible liar for all that he was a master of deadpan. His eyes were too big for his face and fell into shadows. "I'm glad you are safe."

Their eyes caught and held, Dean with one hand on the back of the visitor's chair momentarily frozen by the unexpected words. Cas didn't look away when Dean collapsed into the hard seat as if he was afraid Dean was going to disappear on him. Like Sam, his eyes lingered on Dean's throat, worried when they returned to his face like he was looking into his soul.

It had been close. They'd been walking this razor edge for so long that Dean had forgotten what it felt like to teeter on the brink of losing someone - of being lost.

"I'm okay," he said softly, not knowing if it helped or was even true. His body was screaming for rest but his mind turned over too many demons, too many distractions, and one big ass salt mine. They were on a clock now, and Dean hated clocks.


	6. Part V

_Energetically will I meet the enemies of my country. I shall defeat them on the field of battle for I am better trained and will fight with all my might. Surrender is not a Ranger word. I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy and under no circumstances will I ever embarrass my country.  
\--- Ranger's Creed_

* * *

Two more seriously injured people came in from the Southend of town before the night was done. The fire Jake had put out earlier had flared again when a bunch of Mary's regulars came home and found their buddies beaten up and themselves the next target of their angry neighbors, a role they were happy to fill. It didn't take long for Dad to send Eric and Ridley out to sort out the mess in the neighborhood while he tried to cool tempers and get the story from the men here.

After the night he'd had, Jake sidestepped the whole thing and let Paul and Andy handle rounding up enough help for Eric. Paul had been so quiet on the radio when Jake called it in that he'd thought for a second that it had gone dead, but it hadn't. The Southend was just the camel breaking straw, and not just for the Rangers and deputies who'd had to deal with all this shit.

"I have had enough of this day." Kinchy's clipped accent resonated down the hallway to where Jake was babysitting the last of the men Dad wanted to speak with. The doctor ripped off his gloves and violently threw them into the trash. "You!" he pointed to the man on Jake's right who had a black eye and purple bruise on his cheek. "I hope that bloody hurts because you got off bloody lucky. You get into another fight, you better bring your own shirt to stop the bleeding." He glared at all of them, including Jake. "I need a drink." And stormed off.

April appeared in the space he left, wiping her hands more sedately on a towel as she watched Kinchy leave. She looked about ready to fall over; Kinchy's outburst garnered no more than her blank stare.

Jake crossed the ten feet between them and gently steered her to the empty nurses' station. "You doing all right?" he asked quietly.

April blinked, turning her head a beat late. "We nearly lost him," she said. "Cracked skull. Normally that's something we evac. I don't know if he'll last the night."

Jake perched on the desk and folded his arms over his chest. "But he's alive?"

"Yeah." April heaved a sigh, eyelids falling closed and she slumped forward. Jake had never seen her so beaten down and he wasn't sure if he should reach out or not. He still felt like he barely knew her for all that she'd been a part of the family since before he'd left.

In the end he just said, "You should go home."

April sighed again and sat up. "I know. Gail caught up with me just before this lot was brought in. I just have to finish the notes for the night shift." After another long pause, she visibly pulled herself together and reached for the necessary forms on the desk, as if her moment of rest hadn't happened. Jake's mom was still around, he'd seen her helping the nurses out, so he left April to it and trusted that Mom would force her home soon enough.

April paused when he stood. "Emily was looking for you before all this."

"She was?"

April filled in the top box then raised her eyebrows at him. "She said she was just dropping off the stuff Sam forgot at the school in the confusion. She might still be there."

That was a good hour ago now so Jake doubted it, but he didn't let that stop him from thanking April, telling his babysitee not to move, and hurrying to Castiel's room.

Emily and Sam were sitting just outside the door, with a stack of books piled between them. A few were open and they were speaking quietly when Sam noticed him over her shoulder. Emily turned and smiled wide with relief, standing with her finger marking her place, before the expression muted. "They told me you were in one piece."

"Just a little banged up." Jake smiled back briefly, aware of Sam standing too. "What's this?"

Emily jerked slightly. "Oh, um. The history of Kansas." She turned the title in her hands so he could read it. Vanguards of the Frontier: A Social History of the Northern Plains and Rocky Mountains from the Earliest White Contacts to the Coming of the Homemaker. Pretty heavy reading.

"Hopefully they can tell us something about Jericho and the mine," said Sam. "Emily was good enough to keep looking after we left." He was still covered in dust but at some point he'd washed his face, and when he smiled at Emily as he spoke, he looked five years younger. It was the first time Jake had seen him really smile, happy about something. Emily simply shrugged and looked at the book in her hands.

"It gave me something to do."

In the room, Dean was stretched out on the floor asleep with Sam's jacket over him. Ruby was busy with something in the corner and had her back to the rest of them. Another patient had been added to the room on a gurneys "Have you eaten yet?"

Sam's gaze wandered, too, lingering on Ruby's back. "No, but Gail came by earlier. Said she'd heat up our ration on a real stove, though I told her she really doesn't have to."

"The woman wants to feed you, Sammy. You don't say no," Dean rumbled from the floor, not as asleep as he appeared.

"I doubt she would have let you say no." His mother would have arched an eyebrow and then kept on going as if she'd gone deaf through all his protests. Sam didn't look reassured.

"Well, I better get going," Emily said then. She was still outside the salt line. "If you need any help tomorrow, you know where to find me."

Sam nodded, and Emily turned to go, setting the book down with the others and heading out. Jake followed, jogging a couple steps to catch up.

"Let me walk you home." She lived in the Pines, alone right now with Roger gone. Everyone was supposed to be home licking their wounds but he, Paul, and Andy had put a squad out there for a reason.

"Jake -"

"I gotta check on the Rangers anyway," he said before she could say no. "Please."

That she only gestured at the door for him to join her, however put upon, spoke of how rattled she really was.

It was full dark outside, but Jake found a flashlight in the truck then left the keys in the visor for Dad. They kept it off for the most part and walked in a silence that wasn't quite comfortable until Emily asked what happened at the farm. Jake only held back the part about the demon he saw Dean kill, not sure how to even describe it, let alone without sounding insane.

"So those books," said Jake when he was done. "They talk about the mine? Did you ask Gray?"

Emily shook her head. "We spent most of the time just trying to find anything. The books are a mess and we lost most of the newspaper archives in the fire. All I know was that the town was founded in 1832. I don't know about the mine, yet. That's what Sam's going to look for, I guess."

They turned left at the stop sign. "How was working with him and Ruby?"

Emily shrugged again, looking up at the moon rising on the horizon that stretched out before them. "A little strange honestly. Sam's very intense. He didn't notice me at first - definitely wasn't one for small talk - but he laughed when I made sex in the library jokes. Robert Hawkins got more out of him than I did," she cut her eyes at him reprovingly, "they weren't talking around me."

Jake didn't want to touch that since he had no clue how to bring it up either. "And Ruby?" He'd barely seen her except for the fight at Gracie's. Of the four of them, she was the one that didn't quite fit. He hadn't seen Dean or Castiel talk to her at all, and while she and Sam seemed to be on the same wavelength, they didn't really talk all that much either. Emily's sidelong glance only confirmed his first impression.

"She's kind of a bitch. Reminded me of me in high school."

"What? You weren't nearly as belligerent in high school," Jake grinned.

"Not when I was with you." Emily's elbow bumped his arm. "You were enough of a rebel for both of us." Jake laughed because it was true. God, he'd been a little punk back then.

"What about Dean?" Emily turned the question back on him. "Sam was freaking out about him when we heard about the mine. He got in a screaming match with your dad until Ruby got in his face and said they'd know if they had him. Whoever 'they' are. That's what I don't get. Why are you all being so close mouthed about this? This wasn't a random opportunistic thing. Whoever hit the mine planned it. I thought this was what the Rangers were for."

"They didn't exactly give us warning." Jake rubbed both hands through his hair, making it stick up, and let out a breath. When it came down to it, they didn't know much more than that either. They'd been so focused on the immediate crises that they still hadn't learned what the big picture was. Neither Dean nor Sam had claimed to know what they were doing here specifically but the way they'd traded conversations in silence, brought up Heaven and Hell as if they were part of their everyday language, it was just a smaller piece of the puzzle.

"Be careful with them," Emily broke the silence that had stretched too long. She didn't demand answers, recognizing maybe that he had none.

The turned right onto Farland which led into the residential areas that drifted into the rolling hills. Among the trees it became darker and the moon disappeared from view. They walked the next half mile in silence until the next intersection where the trees opened up, the high school and Farland shopping strip ahead on the right. They weren't far from where the riot had been earlier, the spot marked by four Rangers huddled around a camp lantern on the hood of an abandoned car. Six more were probably walking the patrol line up and down the road along with paranoid residents. They tensed when they noticed Jake and Emily approaching, relaxing only when they were close enough to recognize in the weak light.

"I'll be fine from here," said Emily at the turn off. She pulled her jacket closer around her body with an expression of don't-bother-arguing on her face so Jake let it go. He'd send someone to make sure she was okay when she was out of sight. Watching her walk away, Jake sighed. It couldn't have been more than eight or nine pm and it felt like he'd been awake forever. And more to do before he could crash, starting with giving the Rangers an update.

* * *

Jake went home after checking on the patrol at the entrance to the Pines and the one at the high school where most of the displaced residents from the trailer park were being housed in the gym. The consensus was that they were keeping quiet for now, but no one was happy. At the gym, Jake ducked his head in and saw a knot of people under one of the basketball hoops. With the resentful stares he received just for taking a look inside, Jake didn't venture further. That was better done by Dad or Eric.

Mom was in the kitchen with two pots on the stove when Jake came in the back door. She smiled when she saw him. "There you are. I was beginning to think you slipped off again."

"No. I was only checking on the Rangers."

The corners of Mom's mouth tightened. "I was so worried," she said, the anxiety that had been there at the Med Center was gone. "When I heard -"

"I know." Jake stepped over and let her have another hug. He hadn't been kind to her nerves over the years, and now, when everything was so precarious, it was that much worse every time something went wrong.

"It sounds horrible, but I'm glad you were at that farm. The whole receiving building was just gone and there was debris everywhere." Jake had gotten the rundown from Dad afterward, his own brand of worry and relief consisting of a pat on the shoulder and getting back to business. "And poor Sam. It's like his whole world was gone. His parents are dead, you know. All he's got left is Dean." It sounded like she had adopted him already.

"He didn't do anything . . . " He wasn't sure how to phrase it.

"No. Nothing like that, though if it wasn't your father who told me, I wouldn't have believed it." Jake shouldn't have been surprised that she knew. "I think if he could have, he would, but he wasn't exactly thinking straight." Mom let go of him and wiped her eyes matter of factly. "We've been so lucky. And I don't just mean with all of us being together, but that Jericho is still standing."

"For now anyway."

"That riot stopped." Mom looked up sharply from the pot she was stirring. It smelled like beans from a can. The other held corn which wasn't a surprise. "And those people went home afterwards and they are still home, taking care of their hurt. There's no wild mob loose, it's done, and that's nothing to sneeze at."

"No," Jake agreed. It really wasn't. He leaned back against the counter while Mom kept their dinner from burning.

"Do you know if Eric's still running around, or is he off with that other woman?"

"Mom."

"What? I was just asking. It wouldn't kill him to come home every once in a while."

"You might." Jake gave her a pointed look which only earned him a wooden spoon in his face. As far as he knew Eric was still settling things in the Southend.

"April is pregnant and I don't know what he was thinking running off on her like that. He has a responsibility to be there for her -"

"And he will be." Jake stood up and came over. "You can't force this."

Clearly, Mom wanted to, boy did she ever, but she remained silent and went back to stirring. "Well, since he's not here, why don't you go see if any of what he left here will fit Sam. And maybe find something in your own closet that will fit Dean. April and I already found things for Ruby."

Vengeance in the form of donation. Jake remembered when she'd done that with every black piece of clothing he owned. Nevertheless, he went upstairs to see what he could find. He may have come home with only a small duffel but there might be something that would work.

* * *

Two more patients had been added to the Castiel's room when they returned with a bag of clothes and Tupperware full of beans and corn. All three of the new arrivals were by all appearances asleep. The Winchesters weren't there, but Ruby and Castiel both looked up when they came in. Ruby had pulled the visitors' chair to the corner, paging through a book on her lap in the dark. She glanced at Castiel who looked back with hooded eyes before turning her attention to Jake and his mom.

"We brought dinner," Mom half whispered.

"They're doped out." Ruby nodded to the other three, also speaking mutedly. "Sam and Dean are out by the light, reading."

Jake took a second Tupperware out of the bag Mom had set by her feet and handed it to Ruby. She raised an eyebrow and gave it a look that all but said, _seriously?_ before taking it.

"I suppose French Fries were too much to hope for."

"Fresh out," said Jake. He didn't blame her really. Corn and beans were getting really old. Ruby sniffed it experimentally before trying some, shrugging in acceptance. She was practically skin and bones and needed all the calories she could get.

"This is good," said Castiel.

"Thank you. We're out everything fresh so it's down to canned."

"Canned." Castiel frowned a little and continued eating.

"Don't get all excited," said Ruby. "It won't last."

Her comment made Mom frown, unsurprisingly. Ruby ignored them however, and went back to her chair and pointedly ignored the rest of them in favor of staring out into the night.

Castiel watched her but made no comment, and Jake got the feeling they didn't like each other all that much. He wondered if they had known each other before the bombs or if it was circumstance that had thrown them together. Presumably, they were hunters like Sam and Dean and they had gotten tangled up with the same set of demons.

"I'm going to deliver these," he said.

"Tell Dean I wish to speak with him," said Castiel. Jake nodded and went to find them.

They weren't at the nurses' desk where the camp light was. Natalie said they'd stepped outside for a break and hadn't come back yet. He followed her directions to the side door and sure enough there they were. From their body language, they were about ready to kill each other.

There was less than a foot between them and in perfect synchrony they turned their heads when Jake stepped out. He'd clearly interrupted a fight, a quiet one since he'd neither heard them nor was anyone in the building paying them any attention, but they both looked ready to do some serious damage, a sharp contrast to Sam's fear and worry only a few hours ago. Their anger, however, was only evidenced in the precise motions they used when stepping back from each other with a last venomous look that Jake probably wasn't meant to see. Knowing what they were capable of, it was reassuring that they did.

"Everything all right?" he asked cautiously, hand still on the door behind him. It banged loudly when he let it go.

Sam turned away, pacing off his energy while Dean watched him, jaw clenching for a second before he ran a hand over his face. He looked like death warmed over, still in the clothes stained with Becca Hanson's blood.

"Nothing worth mentioning," he said. Jake doubted that very much, and from the way Sam stiffened even further, if that was possible, he didn't think it was nothing either.

"Something to do with the demons?" Jake ventured.

Neither of them answered right away. Dean stared at Sam's back, then said, "No," with a finality that wasn't directed at him.

He brushed past Jake and didn't let the door slam behind him when he went inside. All the same, Sam flinched as if he had. Jake took a slow step forward, wary of setting off a landmine, and Sam turned at the movement. He looked exhausted, some of the anger bleeding away but replaced with frustration.

"Everything has to be his way," he said through clenched teeth, more to himself than Jake. He paced off again, and Jake gave him a minute before trying again.

"So what was that about?" Jake was so tired, he almost wanted to tell Sam to sleep on it.

But Sam was as antsy as a tiger in a cage; Jake could practically see his tail twitching. "Dean doesn't like my methods, even though they fucking _work_. He wants to sit on his moral high ground and have everything be just fine because he says so." Sam stopped moving for a second and stared at empty space, eyes sliding to Jake and finally seeing him.

"What were you doing?"

But Sam gritted his teeth and turned away, a long shadow in the darkness around them. Jake shivered in the chill air, sucking in cold with each breath as he watched Sam pace again.

Six hours ago he had knocked down thirty people with his mind. The question slipped out before Jake really thought about it. "Is your power dangerous? Besides the obvious?"

"No," Sam spat, offended, and all that pent up rage was suddenly directed at Jake.

"Yeah, I can see why he's not worried."

"So I'm supposed to just sit here with my thumb up my ass when I can find the demons and stop them?" Sam exploded.

"How? By going after all of them by yourself?" He got the frustration - he felt it as well - but there was acting with intent and then there was stupidity, and he knew all about that, too. "Unless they're cutting people up, how are you going to tell who they are? And you said yourself there's more out there. What's to stop them from coming back, looking for revenge? Is that a war you really want to start?"

"Start?" Sam laughed bitterly, a dark smile twisting his lips, one hand thrown wildly out toward the wider world. "When do you think this all started, Jake? A month ago? Try a year. Two. My entire fucking life. And it's not over yet." He let his arm drop and paced away. When he turned around again, his expression had cleared though it was no less hard.

Jake didn't move. He didn't know quite what to do with Sam's outburst so he kept still until Sam's gaze finally slid past him.

"If you had the means to stop this," Sam said quietly. "Would it matter where those means came from?"

Yes, would be Dad's answer, was Jake's immediate thought. He kept silent, however, instead remembering the taste of sand, the smell of confusion, and what it looked like when right and wrong bled to death.

When Sam finally looked at him again, he didn't seem to expect an answer. Or rather, he thought he already knew what Jake would say. Maybe he did, but there was a difference between talking the talk and walking the walk when the path was littered with stones and blind corners. Jake had made his own share of bad decisions, justified them a whole host of ways, and if that's where Sam was, nothing Jake or Dean could say would sink in.

He wondered suddenly how old Sam was. Younger, than Dean, that much was obvious, and younger than Eric. Yet right now, he was as old and battered as any of the veterans who'd shown up at the firehouse.

"I think," he finally said, "that you have to ask yourself if the price is something you can live with. It's not always you that pays."

"When the other option is the apocalypse? What choice is there?" Sam brushed his hair out of his face. "It's no choice."

"We survived the apocalypse." Jake wasn't sure what he was getting at.

Sam gave him a long considering look and a sad smile that was no smile. His earlier anger had burned out. "The US was bombed but Hell's still in Hell." He raked a hand through his hair again while Jake sucked in a breath. His palms were pale where he'd washed them but the dust and grime was ground into the creases. "I just want it done."

Jake met his gaze until he couldn't hold it any longer. Sam went inside, leaving Jake to imagine a Hell on Earth that was worse than what they were already living through.

* * *

When Jake finally went back inside and back to the room, Sam wasn't there. Dean was, however, glaring at Ruby who sullenly glared back. Mom and Castiel were watching warily even as they continued to talk about the corn crop and the dried food stockpiles that people generally hoarded for tornadoes but that were now coming out to play.

"Here he is," said Mom rising as Jake carefully stepped over the salt line. She took the bag he'd forgotten about from him and fished out one of the two remaining containers of dinner and a fork. "There's another bag around here somewhere with a change of clothes, too. Maybe, you'd like to go wash up and change before you eat." Dean stopped pacing long enough to face off against Mom. It was almost funny how he thought he might possibly come out on top of that one. Jake helped matters by finding said bag abandoned by the door and digging out an old pair of his jeans, a t-shirt, and a sweatshirt. They were from years ago, but Dean was skinny enough that they should fit.

Dean took them after another long drawn out minute and a grumbled "thanks" that was more sulky than grateful.

"What's gotten into him?" Mom's hands settled on her hips as she watched him leave.

The argument fresh in his mind, Jake didn't say anything. This was deeper than he could wrap his head around right now, and he still didn't know exactly what they were fighting about.

Ruby answered, however, annoyed. "Sam."

"What are you planning?" Castiel's gaze snapped to hers.

"Oh, I don't know. Killing the demons and saving all our asses?" said Ruby. "It's not like anyone else is lifting a finger around here."

"What are you planning?" Castiel repeated, harder. "Sam cannot -"

"Sam can. Sam has to. In case you haven't noticed we are five seals away from ground zero."

"Hey!" Mom cut in. "Calm down." She looked from one to the other, but neither of them noticed, too intent on each other.

Ruby broke first. "You can deny it all you want," she snapped at Castiel, "but if it weren't for me or Sam, you wouldn't be here right now, and neither would Dean. You'd be barbeque. And the seals would all be broken."

She grabbed her book and pushed past Jake into the hallway, disappearing into a shadow as soon as she left the circle of light of the single flashlight that lit the section outside.

Mom turned to Castiel, throwing a bewildered look to Jake who felt like he was standing on shaky ground.

"This is about the apocalypse, isn't it? Worse than this. Hell on Earth." Jake's eyes fell on the salt and the faint traces of runes or whatever the hell it was that Dean had drawn across the ceiling. That was the big picture here. And stopping it was the chasm that split the foursome. It hadn't quite sunk in until now, seeing the intensity written large across Ruby and Castiel's argument.

Castiel's eyes were luminous, caught by the weak light, shiny and steady. "Yes." He blinked slowly. "Lucifer is almost free from his cage."

Mom glanced at Jake not sure what to believe. Jake had seen to much not to.

"And when he breaks free," Castiel continued slowly, "that is when the true End of Times will occur."

"And the demons are freeing him."

"Yes."

"And that's why they're here. Is Lucifer here? Is he in the mine?" They said salt was a pure substance, after all, and why else would they come to Jericho of all places?

But Castiel shook his head. "No. Lucifer and his cage are not on Earth, not physically as you mean it. The mine likely has to do with one of the seals that hold him in place."

"Lucifer. As in the Devil." Mom folded her arms, digging in. "I don't know if I can believe that."

"It is irrelevant what you believe. His existence is true with or without your belief. He does exist and he is almost free."

"And the mine is a what?"

"A seal." Dean returned wearing his borrowed clothes, his necklace stark against the black sweatshirt. "Lucifer's chains. They've been broken one by one over the last year and a half. We're down to what, five?"

"As of the battle at the Devil's Gate. Unless you let another one fall after I was taken."

Dean picked up his dinner that he'd left on the sill. A little steam rose when he opened it. "Don't go trying to blame it on us if it was. Sam and me were too busy trying to patch ourselves up without killing each other. We don't even know if there is one here."

He dug into the food and didn't seem to care that they weren't anything more than beans and corn.

"I think it must be." The empty Tupperware lay in Castiel's lap, a few kernels of corn in the corner.

"Why's that? Because, me and Sam haven't found anything special about this town except the mine and there's nothing related to that in the books. When the Second great Awakening came through they tented up on the _other_ side of town."

"Do you know the story of Jericho?"

"Dude, that's what I'm telling you, there is no story here. Nada."

"Not here. Jericho. In the Promised Land."

"The Bible story?" asked Mom.

"Yes."

Dean, annoyed, said, "That's in Israel. This is the US. How does that translate?"

"The same way all religions translate through time and space. With faith." Castiel's uncanny eyes fell on first Mom then Jake. "Do you know the story?"

"When the Israelites came out of Egypt they came upon the town of Jericho." Mom glanced from Castiel to Dean. "The people of Jericho were non believers and the Israelites were promised the city by God. They marched around the city seven times and because of their faith, God made the Walls of Jericho fall and they took the city."

It was maybe the one Bible story that had stuck with Jake, and it still seemed ridiculous that they named their town after one that was cursed and conquered by God.

"What, just like that?" Dean rolled his eyes. "They didn't have to sacrifice a cow or something?"

"That's blasphemy." Castiel glowered. Dean shrugged, not caring. "And no it was not so simple except to human eyes."

A look passed between them, and then Dean returned to shoveling food in his mouth.

"So you think what? That we're over thinking this?" Dean looked over his shoulder at the door as he spoke. The sight of Sam leaning in the doorway made Jake startle because of his silent arrival and looming presence for all that he was as skinny as a rail. His hands were shoved under his armpits, hugging himself and he looked back at Dean calmly as though they hadn't just been fighting not twenty minutes ago.

"The mine is only where the salt is closest to the surface," he said quietly, like a peace offering.

"Hallowed ground all over the place," Dean replied. Sam pushed off the doorjamb and let the light he'd blocked back into the room.

Sam looked at Castiel. "You're thinking a demonic inversion?"

"A demonic what?" Jake had been sort of following along until that, half hoping he wasn't listening to three guys tell him that an event that happened several thousand years ago on another continent was relevant to their current troubles.

"Inversion," said Sam. "It's when a holy object or symbol is twisted through black magic -"

"-usually-" Dean chimed in.

"- into an object of demonic worship."

"Also known as evil and wrong and going to get you into all sorts of trouble."

Sam shot his brother a withering glare. "It almost always involves a ritual of some sort."

"So what does that mean for us?" asked Mom.

"It means we still have a lot to do tonight," said Sam. "Ruby might know what they'll try."

"We don't know the focal point."

"The people." Everyone looked at Castiel. He set his container on the side table, lining up the edges. "The Israelites were given Jericho for their faith. They were God's chosen."

Dean glanced at Jake, skeptical, "And they're super religious now?"

But Jake thought he saw where this was going. "No, but were about the only place left with intact law and order. We still have a functioning government and Sheriff's department."

"You can't be the only town."

"But if the ground is holy, like you said? Would that make a difference?"

Dean scratched his scraggly chin, frowning. "Maybe."

"The town was founded in the 1830s," said Sam. "The Protestant Revival."

"They would have blessed the town to hell and back," Dean finished the thought.

"But what does that mean?" Mom, ever practical, had her hands on her hips. "We just keep going as we have been? Make sure we don't succumb to a sudden urge not to pay our taxes?"

"Maybe." Sam's earlier dourness was replaced by thought. "I'll have to talk to Ruby. The magic to break this will be powerful. It's not just a few people, it's turning a whole town."

"We've seen them do it before in what's-it, that place in Ohio."

"Yeah, but that wasn't everyone and there wasn't this level of violence. Riots are a step above sex and alcohol."

"Blood sacrifice." Dean's gaze found Jake. "That's what Monty was gearing up for tonight."

Torture and a slow death. But Sam was shaking his head. "If it were that simple then why incite a riot at all? Why bring attention to themselves instead of just getting it done?"

"Perversion is essential to a demonic inversion," said Castiel.

Dean set his dinner down, gripping the window sill tightly.

"Like with me?" His voice was hoarse, and Jake had lost the conversation again. Dean was staring at Castiel, looking for something from the other man who dropped his gaze, his nod so slight, Jake almost missed it. What that meant, Dean didn't say, just pushed himself roughly away from the wall toward the opposite corner, his back to all of them.

Sam watched him, sad and unhappy. "Can't break them all," he said softly. "This is bigger. Worse. " Worse than what he didn't say, but Dean turned around, the light too dim to see his face. Sam looked away at the floor. "What else would motivate every person in Jericho to break one of the Ten Commandments? Not just the minor ones, but serious multiple infractions that would jeopardize their souls." He glanced at Jake, Mom, Castiel, anywhere but Dean. "We're talking Old Testament contract here. It's the perfect storm to take advantage of."

  
Mom sucked in a breath. "You mean the bombs."

"I can't say for sure, but -"

"No. No, that's impossible."

"Why?" Sam's hands spread, waiting for an objection.

"Because demons did not attack us!" Mom all but shouted. On one of the other gurney's the man stirred, but didn't waken. "It's even more absurd than that it was actual people that decided to wipe out half our country. They did not do it just to get to Jericho. We don't have anything here. We're just a little town in Kansas full of good people."

"That's why," said Dean, voice still cracked. "If Cas and Sam are right, it's because you're good and decent hard working people that they want you destroyed."

"My Father works in mysterious ways," said Castiel, his phrasing odd but no less heartfelt. "There is a deep faith here, even if it is not directly tied to the church. It is there, kept safe on this ground."

"And we're going to keep it that way." Sam said fiercely, standing up straighter. "We're not going to let them have Jericho."

Mom looked as overwhelmed by all this as Jake felt. Jericho the center of a battle to free Lucifer - it was all so far out there, like a bad comic book, yet the three men before them believed it.

Dean looked down at the patient on the gurney beside him, his hand not quite brushing his head. "I'm going for a walk," he said, turning away. He didn't look at anyone as he left.

The silence was deafening in his absence. Sam paced to the window, fingers paralleling the salt line, looking for breaks. Castiel watched him, face blank and unreadable.

"I'm going. . . going to get a drink of water." Mom looked lost, but she took a deep breath, then another, then reached for the bag of clothing at her feet. "Here, Sam." She held it out to him and he looked at it, not understanding until she crossed the room and put the bag in his hand. "Clothes for you and Ruby." She didn't linger, leaving Jake and Sam staring at each other.

"So say you stop this." Jake's lips were dry. "This Seal from breaking. Do your thing. Keep everyone in Jericho from going crazy and killing each other. What happens after that?" Castiel's attention was heavy but Jake didn't budge. He needed an answer. "Are the demons gone or will they come back and try again?"

Neither one of them answered.

* * *

Blueprints and a couple maps of town were laid out on the conference room table with the master on the corkboard, marking where trouble was popping up. Morning sunlight through the blinds cast stripes of shadow across them, dulling the red circles around the mine, the western farms, and yesterday's brawl in the Southend. More red spots peppered the rest of the town like it had chicken pox only the town didn't have an oatmeal bath available to soothe its hurts.

Dad was staring at it now. He had been for the last ten minutes as Jake finished relaying what the Winchesters thought about why the demons were in town and what they planned to do. Sam had explained in a little more detail last night. Dean hadn't come back.

Eric let out a disgusted snort. "Don't tell me you believe this."

Dad's eyes moved from the map to Jake, though the rest of him didn't twitch. Jake couldn't hold the scrutiny and had to look away. "I don't know. Enough to take it seriously just in case. I can't dismiss it."

Jake had never believed that Good and Evil in such raw forms could ever exist. The capacity for evil, he thought, was tempered by conscience and circumstance and he had never doubted anyone's ability to change should they want to. Not many did, granted, but that didn't mean they were any less human.

And yet, that girl at the riot, Monty. Dean believed it, and Jake owed it to him to see it through in spite of whatever doubts he had. "Something's going on out there that I don't understand. It's more than people being scared and going after each other."

"I don't know how to explain what Sam Winchester can do either," said Dad, "but I'm not going to let people's bad behavior be blamed on the Devil." He nodded at the map. "If these demons are at work then they are no more than a bad influence. Jericho can fight bad influence."

He stood up and traced his fingers through the mess of pins, standing close enough to read the street names in their tiny print. "I think what we're forgetting here is that there are a lot of people in Jericho who are not knocking down our door to rat out the neighbors." He turned to face both his sons. "If the people of Jericho are the source of our power, well, then good people we got."

"And a lot of salt," Jake added wryly, unable to stop his smile.

"This is crazy," said Eric but without his earlier heat.

"If we can rally the citizens of this town together, get them to see their neighbors as neighbors and not competition, then it won't matter if this demon thing is real or not. It'll still be an improvement over the complaints and brawls breaking out every ten seconds."

"And just in case . . ." Jake put in, and Dad nodded.

"Find out what we need to do to protect Jericho. Just in case."

On his way back to the Med Center to talk to Sam, a bunch of tiny thoughts bounced around in Jake's head: questions, people to talk to, see if they had any more things like the talisman Dean had given Jake - if they could make more. All of that was sidetracked, however, when Jake saw Dean sitting on the concrete wall by the park. A bunch of kids were playing there, running screaming in circles on the brown grass while their parents watched on the far side where picnic tables were set up for barbeques.

Dean looked over his shoulder when he heard Jake approaching, then returned to watching the children play. He was hunched over in Jake's sweatshirt and he looked like he hadn't slept at all last night. He didn't look in the mood for questions, so Jake, wary of whatever had upset Dean last night, sat down beside him, and watched two little girls play swords with a pair of sticks nearby.

Dean broke the silence first. "Does the third grade teacher really teach her kids how to repair trucks?"

The question startled a quiet laugh out of Jake. It wouldn't surprise him if she did. "Probably." He wondered when Dean had met Heather.

The scene before them was like a snapshot from life before the bombs and it turned out that was a spell that Jake couldn't break. He remembered playing here as a kid with Eric. The two of them and their friends would race around trees that used to be where the jungle gym was now, playing cops and robbers.

"Do you have kids?" asked Dean suddenly.

"No." He thought of April though, his niece or nephew that would be born into this brand new world. "Do you?"

"No." Dean swayed back and forth a little, a head shake with his whole body, then almost abruptly, he stood up. He was backlit by the morning sun and Jake couldn't see his face.

"You got maps of town, right? And been keeping track of trouble?"

The question wasn't what Jake had been expecting at all. Dean didn't wait for an answer, jumped up and over the wall and headed back toward City Hall, slow enough for Jake to easily catch up.

"Yeah." He fell in beside Dean. "What are you looking for?"

"Patterns. Then maybe we can come up with a plan and waste these suckers."


	7. Part VI

_Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission, though I be the lone survivor.  
\--- Ranger's Creed_

* * *

Look at the pattern, connect the dots. He'd been staring so long at the ever expanding multicolored dots he was starting to see them when he looked away. Dean was a lot better at this sort of thing when Sam was describing everything he'd found.

There was a low level hum of activity coming from the rest of the building. When Dean paused, taking a step back from the map and a deep breath to clear his head, he could feel it like a thread of tension pulling him back and making him hyperaware that they were on a timetable. Jake had brought him back here to City Hall and a large crowd had already formed outside, easily two hundred strong, all wanting answers and results for yesterday's unrest. The town was fracturing badly and it was only getting worse.

Every once in a while over the last two hours that he'd been working, one of the deputies stuck their heads in. Twice they popped back out, surprised or uncertain what to do with him. This time it was Hawkins with more pins to add to the map.

Dean leaned against the table and watched. "How's it going out there?"

He was methodical, placing three pins before checking his list for the next three. He put in eleven before turning around. "It's tense," he said when he was done. "The Mayor dispelled most of the crowd and now he and Jake are going door to door to try and calm everyone down."

Dean tried to see if the new pins added anything. Jericho had six major areas, downtown commercial, four residential, and one industrial. The city center was bordered to the northwest and north by two neighborhoods, including the Pines whose southern edge abutted the high school. A smaller, less affluent neighborhood was growing in the northeast corner. South of that and east of downtown the commercial zone gave way to the industrial zone, the salt processing plant and warehouses that were fed from the rail line that passed further east outside of town. The mine was out that way too, just past the town limits. The southern part of Jericho held the working class neighborhood and quickly gave way to rougher terrain. Parts of it had been burned out, including the trailer park, displacing residents.

Most of the complaints centered around the high school, radiating outward, and highlighting along neighborhood borders and in the commercial areas where stores had been looted. Supplies were the biggest problem, and the pins Hawkins added didn't tell a different story. There were reports of violence - fist fights and verbal assaults - but nothing to indicate a demon directly. Whatever was there was too well hidden among all the high tempers and frayed nerves.

Dean rubbed at his eyes, black spots purpling behind his eyelids. They were gritty from lack of sleep and trying to read by flashlight.

"So nothing yet?" Hawkins waved a hand over the mess he'd made of the table of more maps and log books.

"I just can't see it yet," said Dean, sighing. It was there; it had to be.

"Why don't you tell me about it. Might jog something loose." Hawkins was hard to read, but the offer was sincere, and since Sam wasn't there, Dean took him up on it.

"I've broken down the reports by date and time. Everything from before we arrived, and then broken down further for each day we've been here." His own map had red and blue and green marker in points and stars. It didn't look much different geographically from the deputies' map, but the colors were telling. "They've accelerated since Sam exorcised the demon in the Hanson kid."

"Responding to your arrival?"

Dean tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. "Probably."

"Why?"

"Because they know that we'd try to stop them."

"Why not lay low till you were gone?"

The selfish part of Dean wished they had, but he knew why they hadn't. Sam had exorcised the demon and, recent events not withstanding, where Sam was Dean was, and where Dean was angels didn't fear to tread. He didn't want to think about why. "They couldn't risk it."

A hundred questions flittered across Hawkins face, settling into his stance. "Because of whatever Sam can do."

"Because of what they can't lose if we stop it." The manifestation of Sam's powers would probably be more a help than a hindrance, an opening they could take advantage of.

Hawkins digested that, but he didn't ask what the demons would lose. The way his eye roamed over the town, Dean figured he had a pretty good idea and the details were all superficial. "Tell me about the map."

"There are six hotspots." He pointed at the western farms, the high school and the Pines, the salt mine all in a rough line, then City Hall, one of the warehouses where there'd been violent vandalism in the east, and then the southernmost neighborhood that had also been partially destroyed by the fire where last night's fight had taken place. "People are paranoid and watching everyone else. There've been fights at all these locations in the past two days. Other activity is scattered around and over the last few weeks. It's more burglary and property damage and paranoia."

"Anything in particular I should be looking for? Besides the triangle?"

Triangle. Dean saw it but hadn't really paid it attention among the scattered complaints that filled in the gaps. The western farms, the salt mine, and the burned out neighborhood made the points. The other hotspots were on the midpoints in between. If there was a geographic significance like they thought then triangles weren't very useful. Symbolically, they were everywhere and in every culture because just about all of them had a hard on for three. Christianity, too, but they didn't have a plain triangle as any major symbol except the Eye of God which would have been formed with three points not six. Dean needed Sam's encyclopedic brain for anything more esoteric.

"Why six points?" he murmured, his mind turning to Becca Hanson and the cuts up and down her body.

* * *

Half an hour later, Sam took one look at the map and said, "It's a triquetra," and grabbed a pen and sketched in the arcs that formed the interior overlap of three intersecting circles.

"How the hell do you know that?" Dean had stared at this thing and come up with much simpler geometry.

Sam tapped the cover of one of the books he had with his knuckle. "In here it talks about the ceremony to bless the town. Three day event to revere the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."

"There's a thousand symbols for that."

"And to sanctify Mind, Body, and Soul?"

Okay, that made more sense. Dean squinted down at the new lines on the map. "They're breaking the links."

"A blood sacrifice would do it," Ruby said. "And they need malicious intent, that's the true power."

"The question is, what's critical mass?" said Sam.

Ruby leaned over them map. "With the Seal anchored in the land, there's no way to know. They've been building up to this, too. We don't know how much it's already eroded either."

"The Mayor's sent out people to organize a peaceful opposition. But the demons are going to be at the points." Dean pointed to the tips of the triquetra. "We need a plan. I say the three of us hit each of these spots, call out the demon, and let Sam do his thing. Move on. Second verse, same as the first."

Both Ruby and Sam stared at him, surprised, Ruby recovering with a smile, and Sam doing a fish imitation as he tried to come up with words. Dean said, "What?" impatiently because this is what they wanted, right? A solution that included Sam killing things with his brain and Dean signing off on it.

"Are you seriously suggesting -"

"Shouldn't you be happy about this?"

"I am."

"Shut up," both Sam and Dean said, not taking their eyes off each other.

"You bit my head off when we tried to locate them last night."

"Yeah, well, I object to you putting a big fat target on us like that. In case you hadn't noticed, Castiel's not exactly up to fighting strength."

  
"But now you're suddenly okay with all this?"

Dean couldn't hold Sam's gaze, soft and confused where it usually was hard, because, no, he wasn't okay with it.

"It's the whole town at risk here." He shoved at the map on the table, setting it sliding. "There's at least four more demons out there. What are we going to do? Draw a giant Devil's Trap? Encircle the town in salt? Lure them in when they're sitting on one of the biggest Seals they need to break Lucifer free? Like they wouldn't see that coming."

Dean shoved himself away from the table. It was the whole fucking town, Jake and April and Becca Hanson and her kids and Heather and Herman and all those stupid scared people who still went to their Mayor for help.

"We gotta save this town, Sam. They bombed our country. And if this is all that's left . . ." He opened his arms, waiting for another option. The Mayor could convince as many people as he wanted but there would still be the holdouts. The teenagers itching for a fight, stubborn men who wanted it their way or the highway, women afraid for their families. They would crack, because Jake was right, for every one of him there was a Gray, a drunk, or someone too scared to say no to the little devil on their shoulder.

"What happens when we leave?" Sam asked. No question of staying. They both knew staying was out of the question. Another seal, another ghost, another monster preying on the people out in this new fucked up world. Neither Dean nor Sam could refuse that call. "What if Lilith sends more demons and we're not here?"

The map on the corkboard didn't hide anything.

"She'll come back." Ruby's voice was low but certain.

"So we let them succeed on the first try?"

"No. I'm saying killing the demons won't be enough."

"If you want to lure Lilith -"

"No." Sam shook his head. "No, nothing like that. It's what Jake asked me. It's why he had us come down here, to help them fight back."

"We can't protect them all, Sam."

"We can teach them to protect themselves."

"What are you talking about?" said Ruby scornfully. At least Dean wasn't the only one thinking Sam had gone off the deep end. "That won't stop the demons. You two can barely throw a decent exorcism together and you've been doing this your whole lives. These people? No way."

"I'm not talking about exorcisms. Or hunting," said Sam, looking from Ruby to Dean. "I'm talking about rebuilding the Walls of Jericho." He held up the book in his hand. "They did it once."

Dean couldn't read the title.

"Rebuild the Walls of Jericho?" Ruby turned her anger on Sam. "You're kidding, right? Are you stupid?" Sam's jaw clenched as he didn't quite look at her, eyes sliding away from Dean to the map. "That would take an act of God and, hello, he's not in the building anymore."

Sam winced, but only Dean noticed. "It's an act of faith," Dean said softly.

"It's bullshit." Ruby looked between the two of them, but for once they were on the same page, and Dean wasn't sure how they got there. "And it doesn't stop the demons that are already here." She threw them one more disgusted look then stormed out, letting the door slam behind her.

If they were going to do this, Dean slowly let his mind wrap around the idea, then Jericho couldn't be won on demon blood. God had never sanctioned it; Dean could still remember back a year ago, when all this started, the cold of Castiel's voice when he told Dean to stop Sam or he would.

Somehow, neither of them had, and Dean wondered what that meant. He looked at Sam. The anger was still there, but sometime in the past few days it had stopped being aimed at him. "Why now?" he asked. "What happened to the ends justifying the means?"

Sam's giant hands wrapped around the book. "Malicious intent. I don't have much else to offer and I don't want to screw this up. I'm tired of screwing up trying to save seals."

"Yeah," Dean hid his surprise at the admission by clearing his throat. "You're pretty crappy at it."

Sam snorted. "I'm not the only one."

"Shut up, bitch." This time Dean shoved Sam, who only rocked backwards, a small smile showing itself before hiding again.

"I don't know how we're going to make this work."

"We'll make it work," said Dean with a cheerful smile he didn't feel. "What's four demons, anyway? Lunch, that's what. Come on. I'm starving." They needed a break. He slapped Sam's chest and headed for the door, knowing his brother was right behind him.

* * *

The crowd had escalated by the time Dean returned to City Hall, and Mayor Green was there on the steps asking for everyone's patience.

"I know you're frustrated," he was saying, his voice carrying over the gathering. "We are doing our best but we can't do anything if we're all tied up here."

He and Sam had split up Sam to find Ruby and figure out how to renew the triquetra, Dean to keep an eye on demon activity with the deputies. Considering that this area downtown was one of the hotspots and was heating up fast, Dean figured their timetable just got cut in half.

"You haven't been doing anything at all!" someone from the crowd shouted. Heads craned and a man in a scraggly blue coat stepped forward as the people around him gave him space to speak. "Not one of us that was moved to the high school gym had been moved out. There's no privacy, no water, and we don't have anything to trade for food so we get the last of everything and there's not enough to go around! Our kids are going hungry! Where else are we supposed to go?"

"I understand your concerns -"

"You don't _understand_ anything!"

"We're sick of these political games!" A roar of approval rippled through the assembled. More shouts echoed the sentiment, clamoring louder and louder.

The Mayor raised his hands for calm, calling out, "People of Jericho!" over and over until he shouted, "Is violence what you want? Because that's where I see this headed." It got enough people's attention to quiet them down. "You folks are acting as if your neighbors are out to get you. They're not. I understand these times are difficult, but getting through this starts at home. With helping each other, not taking a club to them or shooting their mailbox." He raised his hands against the denials and went on. "I'm asking you to do your part. We had over fifty people in the Med Center last night. Fifty people, from violence in the street. I'm asking you to not let that number go higher. If you do that, then we can get through this.

"Go home. Talk to your neighbors. Listen to them. Don't break my heart."

The crowd dispersed somewhat, knots forming and disintegrating just as fast and, keeping an eye out as he jogged toward the steps, Dean realized that there were people moving with intent, smiling, talking, easing the way through. Jake's people gathered on the edge and there was his mom, Gail, right in the thick of it.

"Son, I hope you have a plan." Dean startled when the Mayor's voice rumbled behind him. He'd waited for Dean to catch up and held the door for him. "I don't know how much longer they'll listen to me. We're just lucky Gray's tied up keeping his office from being torched or he'd be one of the torchbearers out there."

"We're working on it," said Dean. "Sam's figuring out a way to get rid of the demons, hopefully forever, and I'm here to make sure your people are ready."

There was a knot around the radio, and when they drew closer all they heard was static. Dean's arms prickled. That was it. He grabbed the radio from the short deputy's hand and twisted the knob.

"Where was the last check in from?"

There were about twenty support staff from the rest of the building loitering just outside the Sheriff's department, a mix of fear and grit and the need to do something.

"Jake was trying to get through, he was at the checkpoints. The one before was Eric at the salt mine."

"And the one before that?"

"From Gray."

Hotspots all. Signal adjusted, he tried it again. "Jake, do you copy?"

The radio popped and crackled but Jake's voice came through. ". . . not working. . . . . . outside"

"Where are you?" Dean cut in.

" ... Riker..." Dean looked at the Mayor for clarification, though in his gut he already knew. "The Hanson's neighbors."

"This is it," said Dean. "You got a priest?"

* * *

The Mayor knew the priest and drove the truck to pick him up on their way to the Med Center to pick up Sam who had better have a plan or they were very, very screwed.

The priest was Father Ryan who was Lutheran which actually made Dean feel a little better for no real reason. He was in his sixties and had a soft round face that had spent a lot of time laughing. It was dead serious now, and Dean let the Mayor explain, except apparently the Mayor had explained the big stuff already and now was just getting the show on the road. Man knew how to plan, Dean gave him that.

The Med Center wasn't much further, and Sam was outside waiting. Dean's demand for a plan died on his lips when he saw Castiel, on crutches, hobbling out the door.

"No," he said, jumping out of the cab.

"Dean, just listen to me. We can get them all at one time this way. No need for searching." Sam got between him and Castiel and it took a moment for his words to sink in.

"Oh, hell no!" He knocked Sam's hands from his shoulder. "What the fuck are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking we end this!"

"Not by using Cas as bait!"

Sam got in his face. "He's dying," he said for Dean's ears only. "That binding is not going to hold forever."

"It's time to stop this, Dean." Cas was five feet away, washed out in the early afternoon sun.

"Not like this."

"The only way I will be able to help is if I am free. You need my help."

"No."

"We are out of options and out of time." Sam gestured back toward the rest of the hospital. "It's not just about us anymore."

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck. Dean knew Cas was in bad shape. The bouts of pain had been coming closer and closer together. He was an angel though. He was supposed to be the one Dean didn't have to worry about. Not about his flying apart into a thousand pieces that wouldn't be dead but something worse.

"It is to preserve the seal," said Cas, way too calmly. Dean took a deep breath. Those demons weren't going to lay a hand on him.

"Fine." He glared at Sam. "But I'm doing the exorcisms. You're putting binding right back on."

Sam looked about ready to protest, but he didn't, and together they helped Castiel to the truck and got him buckled in beside Farther Ryan. Cas's hand caught Dean's arm when he pulled away, stopping him short. "I will return to my Father."

"It won't come to that." If it did, if Cas was forced to fall, Dean had a feeling he'd be in so many pieces it'd be a miracle if he survived at all.

* * *

The Med Center wasn't at the center of the triquetra but it wasn't too far from it. It was better they get away from there in any case, remove potential victims. Jake and his Rangers, a little worse for wear, came barreling in just as they were pulling out. "I talked to Eric," he shouted from his open window to them and the Mayor. "As soon as we have the demons close, he'll be on his way."

In the truck bed, Dean and Sam sat shoulder to shoulder. Dean let his head fall back and eyes close, trying to bring the words of the exorcism up in his memory.

"I can't even remember the words, man," said Sam.

"I know the words." Dean simply needed to focus. After that time in Ohio, he'd read them a dozen times until they'd been burned into his brain. Most of them. The beginning at least, and if he got started he was pretty sure he could finish it. Fuck.

"I can do this," he repeated. He wasn't going to lose Cas, too, not now, not after everything.

Sam stayed quiet, as the truck turned a corner and bumped along on nonexistent shocks.

Half the town was waiting for them when they arrived at the north end of Main Street at the public parking lot near the park. Dean turned in a full circle; there were eat least five hundred people there, maybe more, and they hadn't stopped coming. All at the center, all here and not an angry mob. Not yet. Distinct groups were scattered about but for the most part they were all here. Dean was impressed.

"How did you get everyone here?" asked Jake, looking around just as stunned by the turnout. Dean had reckoned fifty people, maybe a hundred - how many people could the Mayor talk to in a morning anyway. But here they all were.

"I told them Father Ryan was leading us in prayer to help with the disputes." The Mayor nodded at the priest who dismounted the cab behind him. "I figure it can't hurt to ask for God's help in all this." He said this last looking at Dean.

"No," he said, thickly. "That's the idea."

The Mayor nodded sharply, then turned to Jake. "Let's get this started."

Jake glanced quickly at Dean and Sam then jogged off toward the closest Rangers who were dispersed amongst the crowd. Dean and Sam went to help Cas out of the truck. Ruby appeared on the other side, out of nowhere.

"Where have you been?" Sam demanded. Castiel gripped Dean's shoulder tightly, almost painfully, and when he was on his own feet, pushed him away.

"Starting fires." Ruby eyed the crowd around them. Dean really hoped she meant that figuratively. "The aggressors at the school are going to have their own problems for a little while. Same with the idiots that live near the salt mine."

The blast of a flare gun streaked to the sky, eliciting a gasp from the crowd. The Rangers kept them calm and urged them back. Dean turned to Father Ryan. "That's your cue."

A look at Sam and they made the decision to move to the other side of the truck, out of the way. Cas moved under his own power, stiffly and without the crutches. He sagged against the truck bed when they stopped. Behind them Father Ryan started speaking through the bull horn provided him by the chubby deputy.

_"Good afternoon! We have gathered you all here today to try to set aside our fears and differences that have been a source of strife. We have forgotten what it is that brings us together."_

"You ready for this?" Dean ducked his head to see Cas better. He was pale and sweating.

"Yes. Do it. Break the binding."

"Maybe we should wait for them to start praying," said Sam.

_"Our world has changed. It has changed into something unrecognizable and threatening. But I want to you to see what hasn't changed. Look at your neighbor on your left. Look at your neighbor on the right. We are still here. We are still the same people you have worked with, gone to school with, prayed with. We, the people of Jericho have not changed, not unless we allow ourselves to be torn a part by fear."_

Cas shook his head. "It is time."

Sam's face was pinched and worried. "I can hold them when they get here," he said, looking at Dean for approval. For once Dean was happy to give it.

"Once I start the exorcism, you put the binding back on."

"It won't be necessary." Castiel held out his arm. "Once I am released, I can send them back to Hell. Now break the binding."

"Are you strong enough for that?" Dean's eyebrows shot up.

Cas leveled a look at him. "I will be."

_"May the Lord be with you!"_

"And also with you!"

"Let us pray!"

Dean wanted to argue but he knew it would do no good, and besides they had to take advantage of the prayers while they could. Here at the center of the triquetra, they brought together the land, the people, and their faith - Body, Mind, and Soul - Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Dean just hoped it was enough.

He took out the demon knife, the only one he had. Perhaps the only one that would work on the binding Sam had set with demon magic. Sam unwrapped the bandage covering Castiel's brand; it was oozing blood again. It hadn't really stopped.

"Dean," Cas said suddenly, his fingers curling around Dean's wrist as he set the knife to the raised skin. "You are a good man. And you have always been strong enough to carry this through. I have faith in you."

Dean couldn't move, lost in Castiel's sure gaze that backed up every word.

"Now." Blinking rapidly, Dean brought himself back to the here and now. Focused on the knife in his hand and the brand on Cas's arm. He pressed down. Castiel screamed.

It was deep and primal, like the shriek of a bird of prey before it struck. The prayer around them stopped, Father Ryan on the bull horn recovering after a pause and the rest slowly joining back in. Hidden from view between the truck and the wide-eyed deputies, the people of Jericho didn't know where to look for the source.

They didn't have long to wait. Six streaks of black boiled through the sky landing like meteors in six people including two of the deputies, the fat one and the short one. They spun as one but Sam already had his hand out, holding them back. They shrieked and yelled against his hold and the other three broke free of the crowd that was faltering again, the bull horn silent as Father Ryan spun as well, eyes black.

Dean's focus was split between them and the sweat darkening on Sam's brow, and Castiel who was breathing hard, face a twist of pain. His cry had silenced between grit teeth, but he'd fallen to his knees, the broken leg in its hard cast twisted awkwardly in front of his body. Somewhere in the background, he heard the Mayor pick up where Father Ryan had left off, the voice of the crowd following. Dean held the knife ready waiting for Sam's hold to fail. He couldn't hold them all forever. And Sam was right, Dean didn't remember enough of the exorcism to do them any good.

"Cas, not to ignore your pain, but it would really help if you could get this moving."

"Give me ... a ... moment." The moment stretched to one, to two, and then the first demon was free. With Sam frozen, it was down to Dean - he really didn't want to knife the poor person it was wearing - when suddenly, Ruby was there, spinning in front of Dean with a knock out punch that sent the demon reeling. Dean didn't have long to feel useless as a second demon broke free.

"The angel," it hissed. "You thought you could escape. Not so."

"You're going to have to come and get him." Dean dodged right and then went flying backwards into the truck.

"Dean!" Sam shouted.

"Don't lose the others!" Dean yelled back. Ruby was keeping the other one occupied and he could see Sam's grip change in. "Sam, no!" He was going for it, and he couldn't. It would taint the holy ground. They were pushing it with him using his powers at all.

Dean struggled back up, head spinning and his right shoulder throbbing, and put himself between the demon and Cas again. The demon smiled, sensing weakness - he choked. Fuck. "Sam, let him go!" His brother's face was twisted, gone with the effort and his hold on the others weakened.

"Sam!" Then Jake was there, between Sam and his death grip. "The others!" It was enough. Sam's other hand snapped up to hold the other four and he focused on Dean. The demon breathed again, air flooding back into the woman, and then it wasn't anymore. Sam's eyes were locked on Dean, and in them he saw only Sam, his little brother who followed him around with his floppy hair and his dimples his whole life. Who wasn't going to let Dean be killed by a demon because he loved him and he could stop it.

The demon choked and sputtered, bubbles of black smoke expelling from its mouth and falling into the ground. The others stilled, the abuse from them stopping as they watched. It was like a spell had fallen over everyone while they all waited for it to be over. And when it was, when the woman collapsed, free and alive, the rest of the world came flooding back.

The other demons tried to flee, and Sam struggled to keep them, nose bleeding, but there were going to break free soon. Jake was screaming in his radio and the Rangers were clearing a hole in the crowd when four horsemen burst through. Dean recognized Eric in the lead a bag of salt emptying off his saddlebag. The Mayor switched from prayers to instructions and back again. _"Outside the salt! Our Father, who art in Heaven..."_

Dean was aware of it all for a split second before spinning into a crouch by Castiel who had fully collapsed. The angel was as white as a ghost, though still present, eyes burning fever bright. He was making a small broken sound and there were tears on his cheeks. "Hold on," said Dean, cradling his head. "Hold on. Pull yourself together."

But Cas only grabbed onto his arm desperately, barely strong enough to hold on. A thousand doubts flashed through his eyes, every doubt he'd ever had, extracted from him in Hell and laid bare, the suffering at the heart of his torture that had been twisted into his downfall. "Dean," he breathed.

"You said you could gather your strength." Castiel's chest was glowing, slowly emanating outward and pulsing in time with his heartbeat. "You said -"

"Dean," Castiel whispered. He didn't look away. His other hand came up to rest on Dean's chest. "Faith."

And then he shattered.

The light, blinding and brilliant, burst into a thousand pieces. Dean squeezed his eyes shut and bent over Cas's body, feeling a thousand tiny pricks like glass and fire strike through him, shrieking till his ears bled. Doubt and faith and love and confusion and pain and grief followed. Dean as Cas first saw him blooded and crazy at the rack, Dean confused and hurting as he dug his way out of the grave, Dean drinking, Dean fighting with Sam, teasing him, banging his head against a wall with him, fearing for him, loving him anyway. Dean in denial, Dean putting one foot in front of the other. It hurt because Dean didn't feel like that man. It hurt because no matter how many times he proved that it wasn't him, Cas never once doubted it.

Through it all he held on.

* * *

When Dean came to, he was lying in Cas's bed. Sam was in the uncomfortable chair beside him. The Devil's traps and salt lines were still in place on the ceiling and the window sills.

Sam blinked when he noticed Dean awake. "Hey."

Turning his head was painful, but Dean did it anyway. Sam looked fine, a little cut up but fine. "Hey."

He had a vague recollection of afterwards. Sam keeping the others back, the noise as the Mayor and his people tried to calm everyone down and finish the ritual. Jake coming by with Eric and helping Sam move him. Ruby helping the people the demons had taken over. Sam beside him all the way to the Med Center.

"The seal?" His voice was scratchy and Sam passed him a cup of water from the night stand.

"No one died today," said Sam. "I think it's okay." He didn't look happy about it.

"Good." Dean felt wrung out. Castiel was gone. He remembered that clearest of all. Maybe not dead, but gone all the same and he couldn't quite grasp it. He hadn't even liked the angel half the time, yet he still felt like a hole had been ripped through him.

"Where's the, the body?"

He could feel Sam's gaze. "In the morgue." A touch fluttered on Dean's wrist has Sam slid his hand around Dean's wrist. "For a moment there ..."

Dean's eyes opened to a slit. The room was still too bright and the light seemed to get lost on Sam's bowed head. "I'm still here, dude. I think we've pretty much proved you can't get rid of me."

A smile escaped onto Sam's face even though his eyes were wet when he looked up. His fingers tightened around Dean's wrist. "Me either." Everything Dean had seen earlier was there again, ten feet closer and no less bright.

He still had Sam. As many times as he'd almost lost him, or feared he had, here he was.

Maybe if Sam was strong enough not to be consumed by his powers, Dean was strong enough to stop the apocalypse.

"You all right?" asked Sam.

"Yeah." Meaning not really but eventually. "You?"

Sam watched him from somewhere inside his own head, and Dean stared for a second, eyes flickering over the cuts on his brother's face, his hair that was shaggier than ever, falling into his eyes and hiding the stubble on his jaw. For a moment he looked like Dad, but then he half smiled and was Sam again, dark eyes, solemn face, and shadows that he couldn't quite hide. "Yeah," he said, meaning same here.

When the moment had gone on too long for Dean, he closed his eyes, safe under Sam's watch, and let himself drift into sleep.


	8. Epilogue

"Where will you go?"

The sky was a sharp blue, cloudless. A biting wind swept across the prairie, reminding all of them that winter was just around the corner.

Dean and Sam both shrugged, both freshly cleaned and shaven, almost unrecognizable. "South, southeast," said Dean. "Somewhere warm." He still had tiny scabs peppering his face, accenting the grief just under the surface.

It had been four days since Castiel's death, and now that Dean had healed enough, he and Sam were anxious to leave.

"You should stay." Mom regarded them both with a worried frown. She’d been trying to talk them into it all day.

Sam nudged his pack where it rested against his leg. "We can't." He looked like he hated saying it as much as Mom hated hearing it.

"World's still here," said Dean. "And we've still got a job to do." He forestalled any further protests by going over to April and kissing her on the cheek. "You take care of that kid."

Beside Jake, Eric shifted uncomfortably but didn't say anything. Mom gave Sam a hug and pressed another bag of canned goods on Dean. Dad, Eric, and Hawkins all shook hands, and then they were piling the packs into the back of the truck. Sam climbed up after while Dean got in the cab with Jake for the ride to the border.

They drove with the windows open, and the breeze felt good through Jake's hair. "We don't know if it worked," said Dean suddenly. "Rebuilding the Walls, I mean. Not for sure." When Jake glanced over he was looking at the buildings as they drove through first downtown then the Southend, the same route as their first trip together. It was quiet - the whole town was, thankfully - but people were still out, kids playing in yards. They stopped to watch and wave as they drove by.

Sam had assured Dad that it had worked. That Castiel's sacrifice had sanctified the ground and reinforced the prayers of the people. He never did say how or why Castiel had erupted in light or how it had destroyed the demons inside everyone. No one had quite wanted to ask. Dean had survived but Castiel's body had been burned to ash.

"I thought you should know." Dean tapped the dash with his fingers and glanced over at Jake, eyes big in a face that was still too thin. They'd only been in Jericho a week. "Don't let your guard down."

Jake hadn't planned on it. "I won't."

They kept driving past the town limits, the quiet seeping in as they sped past empty fields and abandoned farm houses ever further out. Jake stopped when they got to Walnut Creek. It wasn't much more than a dry bed with a trickle meandering down the center, but it was water and it would keep them in the right direction.

"It feeds into the Arkansas River," he told them as Sam dismounted and they shouldered their packs full of warm clothes and sleeping bags, and studded with their arsenal.

"Thanks," said Sam. "For everything."

Jake grinned. "I think I should be saying that to you."

"Yeah, well, the supplies are thanks enough." Dean smiled back. He held out his hand and Jake took it. "Good luck."

"You, too." Jake shook Sam's hand, then stood there a moment and watched as they started their trek along the bank where gray and leafless trees bent toward the water. They walked side by side, and Jake doubted he'd see them again.

"God," he murmured, eyes flickering to the open sky then back to the two figures disappearing into the trees, "keep them safe." Then he got back in his truck and headed home.

 

* * *

the end


End file.
